harms their fisheries, and they are calling on the DMR to resolve what they regard as a gear conflict. The National Audubon Society, a nationwide environmental group, has put mussels on its list of environmental unfriendly seafood because of the perceived impacts of dragging.
    The list goes on, but Chip Davison and Carter Newell, a biologist for Great Eastern, the two men on the front line of this expanding industry, remain positive amidst the battles that rage around them.
    "We got our production up to about 7 million pounds in the mid-80s," said Newell, recognized as the top mussel biologist in the state. "We've maintained that for about 15 years. I think we can produce another 7 million pounds using suspended culture."
    Until recently, the majority of farmed mussels grew on bottom leases, little more than exclusively managed wild beds. But, according to Newell, the most desirable mussels now come from suspended culture. In suspended culture, 40 foot long by 40 foot wide rafts support up to 400-500 ropes, hung with mussel seed. When the mussels mature, in about 18 months, approximately 10 pounds of mussels per foot are harvested from the ropes.
    Newell estimated a yield of 1,000 bushels annually from each raft. "But we're getting twenty-two hundred off some of our rafts now," he adds. So far Great Eastern has five rafts in production. "We hope to get eight more in this year," said Newell, although that number is still a far cry from the more than 100 he needs in order to reach his goal.
    The eight rafts are the result of a project engineered by Newell and Davison to get more fishermen into mussel aquaculture. Great Eastern received a grant of $30,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture, loans of over $200,000 and put another $250,000 of its own money into the project. "There's nearly half a million dollars in this," said Newell.
    Great Eastern holds almost all the leases it can, 150 acres, under current Maine law. "I realize Maine wants fishermen to do the work," said Davison. "That's what we're after. Great Eastern will do the marketing. My goal is to get fishermen into aquaculture."
    Davison's company financed the building of a 64' barge used to harvest mussels from rafts, while the grant and loans will be used to help set up prospective aquaculturists. Davison offers to provide technology and financing to interested fishermen. Fishermen who hold an aquaculture lease are provided with a $25,000 raft, on credit, and guaranteed $20 per bushel for their product. The fishermen pay the initial cost of seeding, around $300 according to Davison, and the cost of harvesting. Great Eastern harvests the mussels with its new barge at a cost of $3.50 per bushel.
    Fishermen in the program must sell exclusively to Great Eastern until the rafts are paid off. "We figure they'll pay $6.00 per bushel for six years," said Davison. The average grower will end up with around ten thousand dollars from one raft, claimed Davison. "That's for about a week of seeding, a week of harvesting and a few days tending the nets," he said, referring to the nets around the raft to protect the mussels from eider ducks.
    As soon as fishermen pay off their raft they are free to sell to any buyer. But Davison claims he will do what he can to keep getting mussels from the new farmers. "We need the product, we'll be competitive," he said.
    While some fishermen enthusiastically signed onto the Great Eastern's no-money-down offer, others remain suspicious.
    "They pay less than anybody else," said Timmy Manning, a mussel dragger from Sorrento. "And they sell for a higher price."
    Chip Davison has heard it all before. "We bust our tail here," he said. "And we're good at what we do. Are we going to be penalized for that?"
    "I don't think much of Great Eastern," said James West, another Sorrento mussel dragger. West recently applied for a lease, but plans to build his own raft and sell his product to other markets. "We can't get grants," said West. "Great Eastern is trying to monopolize this." Although West acknowledged that business is business, he felt Great Eastern had not played fair.
    West joined a mussel raft group with Great Eastern and several other growers. "I was under the impression we were all going to get grant money and share it, but no. Great Eastern got it all and built their first raft."
    Newell has a reputation for grant writing. "Carter is the best," said Manning. "He gets all the grant money." He added though, that Newell owns part of the company that builds the rafts. "I think that's a conflict of interest," he said.
    Newell acknowledged that he does own part of the company assembling the rafts, but points out that Great Eastern, which also owns a share in the business, has made a point to buy almost all the components for the rafts from Maine companies.
    Newell owns other companies as well, such as Pemaquid Oyster in Damariscotta which set up the Maine Aquaculture Training Institute with a $33,000 grant from the Maine Science and Technology Foundation.

The End of the World as We Know It
    While Newell, Davison, and many others believe aquaculture spells the future for Maine's fishing communities, many fishermen claim that leasing of the bottom will eventually leave them no place to fish.
    Several lobstermen and scallop draggers turned up for a lease hearing in Sorrento on May 22, and testified that the lease should go somewhere else. "If they just moved it out into deeper water, it'd be all right," said Kittridge Johnson, a Winter Harbor fisherman.
    Others do not want to see bottom leased at all. "Once that goes into a lease it's gone from the public domain," said Stonington lobsterman, Marsden Brewer. "I tell these guys they would be better off to organize and seed their own beds." Brewer advocates the use of small rafts that are covered under legislation that allows for suspended aquaculture by rule. "You wouldn't have a lease, you'd have a permit. That way you could grow mussels in a place for a few years and then move your rafts and let somebody else fish there for a while. It would still be in the public domain."
    Another faction of Maine's population wants to put a general moratorium on aquaculture leases. Coastal property owners in Sorrento, where three leases have been applied for recently, met on June 29, to discuss the issue. (See side bar.) While draggers, lobstermen, aquaculturists, and summerfolk argue the merits of leases and where they should go, the state's worm diggers have called for an end to dragging seed mussels from intertidal zones for their own reasons.
    "It destroys the worms," said biologist/worm digger Thomas Atherton, of Bucksport. Atherton has amassed a lengthy file on the negative effects of dragging in the intertidal zone, including a 1991 paper by Carter Newell. Atherton called on the Department of Marine Resources to take action and resolve what he considers a "gear conflict," but to no avail. He and other wormers did reach an agreement with Great Eastern that created no-go zones for mussel draggers.
    "But that agreement has already been broken in Lamoine," said Atherton, who points out that only a few boats drag in the intertidal zone.
    "We not getting any help from the DMR on this," said Newell. He hopes to get the DMR to mark off areas and enforce limits on dragging in the intertidal zone. "We already have designated seed areas," said Newell. "It should all be designated. Fishermen should need a permit to drag in the intertidal zone."
    But Newell claims the dragging helps the wormers over the long term. "You drag out a third of the mussels and it creates islands that the worms live around. Leave that for a year and you'll get good worming."
    Atherton has had a different experience. "They don't take a third, they take it all," he said. "In areas where they drag for mussels the worms are gone."
    Atherton feels Great Eastern makes a practice of avoiding real issues by using weird science. "When these people say 'we're helping you,' that's called extreme extrapolation."
    In addition to existing controversies, the National Audubon Society, in its Seafood Guide, listed mussels as an environmentally unfriendly choice because of the dragging involved in harvesting.
    "That's unfortunate," said Bill MacDonald of the Island Institute, "because it puts suspended culture at a disadvantage. Suspended culture is not negative."
    MacDonald foresees fishermen getting into mussel culture and forming co-ops to market their product. "It's possible to keep this business on a small scale," said MacDonald.
    In Canada however, mussel growers are thinking big. "I'm about to get a thousand acre lease," said Andy Frank, owner of All Season Aquatic Farms, Ltd. in Arichat, Nova Scotia. Within three years, Frank expects to be producing between 7 and 15 million pounds a year, using suspended culture.
    According to Davison, Canadians like Andy Frank will soon be taking the lion's share of the market. "Fishermen need to get involved now," said Davison. "If they decide they don't want to, the opportunity will be gone. We need product now."
    "If Chip Davison needs product, I'd like to meet him," said Andy Frank. "We could supply him."
    That prospect might please coastal property owners, and others who would be glad to see the aquaculture business move across the border completely. But for fishermen who want to become farmers, whether in cooperatives operating freely in the public domain, or as individuals under the auspices of Great Eastern, Andy Frank's message is clear. The mussel industry will undoubtedly expand. Where it expands is up for grabs.