This story is part of “Cultivating the Coast,” a special report that explores Harpswell’s rapidly growing aquaculture industry.
Last year, Harpswell oyster farmer Samantha Bohan learned the town was considering a one-year moratorium on new aquaculture leases because of concerns about their impact on traditional fishing.
Bohan had just started her own farm a year earlier and was worried she wouldn’t be able to renew her two small, annual leases. Instead, Harpswell created a working group to study the issue, and Bohan volunteered to serve on it.
“It’s kind of funny. I always told my husband I don’t ever want to get into politics,” she said in an interview. “And he said, ‘The moment you got an oyster farm, you signed up for politics.'”
Created in May 2024, the town’s Aquaculture Working Group set out to examine how Maine’s aquaculture licensing process works, assess its impact on Harpswell, and gather public feedback on the growing number of seafood farms in local waters.
The group’s efforts culminated in the creation of a new map of local commercial fishing areas, which it urged state officials to use when evaluating applications for aquaculture leases to help avoid conflicts with fishermen. Its final meeting was on June 11.
The map was created with input from 20 licensed fishermen, including 16 lobstermen, said working group member Darcie Couture, another local oyster farmer who was recently named Harpswell’s deputy harbormaster. It will be posted on the town’s website and updated when new information becomes available.
The Harpswell Select Board created the working group based on a recommendation from the town’s Marine Resources Committee.
The committee had sought a one-year moratorium on new aquaculture leases while it studied the effects of oyster farms and other aquaculture on wild shellfish, but the state Department of Marine Resources asserts exclusive jurisdiction over leases.
The working group’s mission was to gather input from various stakeholders, review state laws and policies regarding aquaculture, and make recommendations to the Select Board that promote equitable and sustainable management of marine resources.
“I’m not for just aquaculture,” Bohan said about her involvement in the group. “I come from a fishing family. I’m trying to make sure that we can all coexist.”
Diverse membership
The working group brought together people from across Harpswell’s fishing and aquaculture sectors.
In addition to Bohan and Couture, the group’s eight members included lobstermen Chris McIntire and Matt Gilley, as well as fisheries advocate Jerry Leeman III.
They joined former state lawmaker and House Marine Resources Committee Chair Jay McCreight, town Harbor and Waterfront Committee Chair Billy Saxton, and town Marine Resources Committee Chair David Wilson, who both farms clams and harvests wild clams.
Gilley was among a handful of residents who had approached the town in 2024 about creating the working group. In March, he ran unopposed for a Select Board seat and won.
“We were being inundated with aquaculture, and there wasn’t really a process to site it responsibly,” Gilley said in an interview. “This did a disservice to the applicant, too, because they wouldn’t understand what other fisheries (activity) might be taking place in that area.”
Gilley said a required pre-application site survey by the applicant often isn’t enough to determine whether an area is free of traditional fishing, because it may be seasonal. The working group solved that problem for lease applicants by mapping out fishing grounds in detail.
Leeman, founder and CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, said that in addition to the impact on fisheries, he is concerned about aquaculture’s environmental impacts.
“I’m not against aquaculture … if it makes logical sense and is not impacting the environment or the local ecology,” he said in an interview. “The fisheries, for the most part, have (coexisted) in the environment, but I’m not seeding a million mouths to feed into an area.”
Leeman said there hasn’t been enough research to determine how much aquaculture Harpswell’s waters can sustain without depleting essential nutrients relied upon by other species. “Right now, we’re guessing, and I don’t want to guess.”
Researchers generally regard in-water shellfish farms as ecologically beneficial — they clean the water, support biodiversity, and may help buffer areas from ocean acidification. Still, there can be site-specific impacts such as the accumulation of organic waste beneath densely stocked farms, which can alter sediment conditions and reduce oxygen levels.
In poorly flushed areas, heavy filtration by shellfish may also lead to localized reductions in phytoplankton, potentially affecting other filter feeders, according to a University of New Hampshire study on oyster farms. The Maine Department of Marine Resources says it works to mitigate such impacts through careful siting, regular monitoring and adaptive management.
McCreight, the former legislator, got involved with the working group after hearing about a statewide effort to encourage towns to impose moratoriums on aquaculture, led by a nonprofit called Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage. The group’s website says it opposes “industrial scale aquaculture” in the state.
“My first reaction was, ‘Well, that’s nuts, because it’s state water and state regulation, so what value would a moratorium have?'” McCreight said in an interview. “Other than trying to create tension, it has no value.”
McCreight was concerned about interest groups fomenting opposition to aquaculture among local fishing communities, so she joined the working group as a way to use her legislative background to help foster education and mutual understanding.
Lasting impact
The group also has served an important administrative function, meeting with lease applicants to go over their proposals, ask questions, and offer alternative site suggestions when necessary.
That work will be taken up by a new standing committee called the Harpswell Fisheries Committee. Four of the new committee’s members also served on the working group, so there is an overlap of institutional knowledge.
But the working group’s major achievement has been creating the map, McCreight said. Most of the work was done by Couture, who has expertise in geographic information systems — a tool set for collecting, managing and analyzing geographic data.
“Rather than a destructive or contentious process, it became a constructive process with the mapping,” McCreight said.
Amanda Ellis, Aquaculture Division director for the state Department of Marine Resources, said both the state and lease applicants benefit from a robust pre-application process at the local level, including the use of fisheries maps.
“Those maps may also be used in lease proceedings to help support public testimony or comment about the application,” Ellis said.
Couture, a marine biologist who grew up in Harpswell, had previously helped the town with related projects such as shellfish resource surveys. In 2020, she started a small oyster farm in Harpswell that has become a significant source of personal income.
Couture said the strategy of mapping Harpswell’s fishing activity to reduce conflicts was partly inspired by her own experience carefully choosing her farm’s location, which she did with input from local fishermen.
“One of the things that gets discussed is that, maybe, not every farm is that thoughtful when they’re trying to place themselves,” she said. “It’s not so much that new farmers were trying to be obstructionist or get in the way. They just literally had no way to know.”
This story is part of “Cultivating the Coast,” a special report that explores Harpswell’s rapidly growing aquaculture industry.
