A proposed mussel farm expansion in Frenchman Bay is pitting a longtime local business against neighbors who worry that aquaculture is growing in Maine unabated.
Acadia Aqua Farms LLC wants to lease 48 acres in Frenchman Bay for 20 years to install a new type of suspended aquaculture system that will help the mussels avoid predators. Invasive green crabs now eat many of the tiny mussels — referred to as seed — before they can grow to harvest size.
Also, warmer water caused by climate change means the business needs to look for ways to innovate, said Alex de Koning, a sixth-generation mussel farmer and son of company founders Theo and Fiona de Koning.
“We need regular access to seed to survive,” Fiona de Koning said. “We need to find a way to make this work.”
Yet the 80 members of Friends of Eastern Bay, the portion of Frenchman Bay where the lease is located, are questioning whether the expansion will catapult the small, family-run business into a larger more industrial operation. And, the organization worries that other nearby lease applications, not to mention the in-water salmon farm proposed near Acadia National Park, will put too much pressure on a vulnerable water source used by lobstermen to make a living and by recreational boaters who enjoy Maine’s coastline.
“There don’t seem to be any mechanisms to look at cumulative impacts,” said Jeri Bowers, president of Friends of Eastern Bay. “We’re looking at what’s on the table and saying where does this stop?”
The Maine Department of Marine Resources will hold a public hearing March 28 on the proposal. As of the pre-meeting deadline, 27 people are registered to speak at the hearing, according to DMR spokesman Jeff Nichols.
If approved, the new lease site will be added to Acadia Aqua Farms’ current leases in five locations that comprise 158 acres in Frenchman Bay. The current “bottom culture leases” are virtually invisible except for the yellow marker buoys around the perimeter. The new system will be different – and more visible – because the black pipes will be laid out in rows two inches above the water.
And although the lease is for 48 acres, the maximum area the pipes would cover will be just over 1 acre. There will be space between the pipes so the harvest boat can get in between, an area large enough “for kayaks and other watercraft,” Fiona de Koning said.
It's a system that’s been used in Europe for years.
“We let our Dutch colleagues figure out all the technical troubles,” she said. “It’s a big investment to do what we need to do now.”
The $1 million investment in the new system comes after eight years of research into how it has worked in Europe and how it might perform in Frenchman Bay. In 2019, the de Koning’s submitted their application, which is now considered final by the state and ready for a public hearing.
Unlike some types of salmon farming that release feces and food into the water source, mussels remove high levels of nitrogen that ends up in the water from farm runoff and other sources, Alex de Koning said. If their system is approved, he estimates it will remove up to one-quarter of the nitrogen released into the bay by Bar Harbor.
Bowers said her group acknowledges that mussel farming is good for the environment and that they do not oppose small scale aquaculture. But they are concerned that the proposed system is new to the U.S. and they don’t feel they have enough information about potential noise and harvest frequency.
“I think we’re really just trying to raise concerns about the current regulatory process based on how fragile these bays are,” she said.
Protecting the bay is important to the de Konings too, they said this week during a tour of the proposed lease site by boat. They pointed to the warehouse where they pack the mussels and the road that leads to their home while explaining that they’ve spent 18 years working to contribute to the community.
They moved to Maine in 2004 from the Netherlands, where the family had been raising mussels since the mid-1700s, Alex de Koning said. He was just 15 at the time and the family — his two siblings and parents — hoped to live their version of the American dream.
“It was hard at the beginning,” Fiona de Koning said. “When we first came over we were sort of under the umbrella of a distribution and processing company.”
Since then, they’ve grown to employ 15 people year-round and produce about 1 million pounds of market mussels per year.
They worry that some of the public resistance to their project comes from concerns about an unrelated proposal to build a large-scale salmon farm around the corner in Frenchman Bay at the foot of Cadillac Mountain. The company with a similar name — American Aquafarms — proposes to put 30 closed net-pens in the bay and use a processing plant in Gouldsboro, which prompted local officials there to institute a six-month moratorium on aquaculture development.
With regard to the mussel farm expansion, Judith Burger-Gossart, who lives in Salsbury Cove, criticized the proposal in a January letter to the Mount Desert Islander for “attempting to grab 48 acres — the equivalent of 36 football fields — in the heart of Frenchman Bay.”
“I am not against small-scale aquaculture, but this is aquaculture writ LARGE with a Sharpie!,” she wrote.
Bowers said the state’s approach to approving new aquaculture sites, which is to consider each application individually, does not allow for towns to take an active role in the planning process. Having one set of rules for the entire state is also problematic, she said.
“We see this as a red flag for the entire state,” Bowers said. “It’s a bit of a gold rush mentality out there where you better get it while you can.”
Fiona de Koning, who has spent years serving on various community boards, including the Bar Harbor Marine Resources Committee and the state’s Aquaculture Advisory Council, said she noticed a change in attitude toward aquaculture in early 2018. That’s when Mere Point Oyster Company in Brunswick applied for a 40-acre commercial harvesting operation and faced significant pushback from waterfront landowners and lobstermen.
Since then, companies have proposed large-scale fish farms in Belfast, Bucksport, Jonesport and Bar Harbor/Gouldsboro.
When designing the proposed mussel system in Frenchman Bay, the de Konings have been mindful that they are using a shared resource that will be visible to others, she said.
“We chose this system with their best interests at heart not to make it more visible than it has to be,” she said. “We are trying to keep the footprint as small as we can. We are collaborative people.”