My concerns about the City of Belfast welcoming Nordic Aquafarms remain, despite the PR campaign both city officials and NAF have been waging.  Why risk increased pollution of Penobscot Bay by a for-profit company with very little experience? NAF incorporated in Delaware, in 2014 and has not seen a successful harvest of farmed salmon yet.

 Aquaculture as an industry is noted in Wikipedia to be the fastest growing food industry in America. And salmon, which comprises 13 percent of farmed fish production is estimated to bring in 34 percent of the "value" of all farmed fish. Bingo. Money.  Not food for the masses, after all. 

Why here? Why is Belfast, Maine, the best place on earth for this experiment?

Well, in Norway, NAF is permitted for 2,200 ton annual production and in Belfast, they are requesting 33,000 tons annually-to start at half this tonnage, Erik Hein stated, but this is still over 10 times what has been permitted in Norway. And it looks like they believe they will get it. 

And interestingly enough, there are no regulations and special permitting " snags" here in Maine. 

In Nova Scotia, where the only two operating RAS facilities for full growth salmon are housed, there is currently a Dept. of Fisheries and Aquaculture, recently updated to include a very conscious section on public participation and transparency. 

Quoted from their website: "These regulations contain new checks and balances to ensure that new aquaculture development happens where it makes sense based on scientific evidence." 

Who will regulate NAF in Maine? The Dept. of Agriculture!   

 If aquaculture is the fishing grounds of the future, certainly its development here deserves to be the "largest community conversation" before we agree to the "largest land-based fish farm in the world."  There is a lot at stake — Our environment, our water, our world.

Meredith Bruskin lives in Swanville