![]() ![]() “The Maine coast is almost all lobster now, and it didn’t used to be that way,” says Baines, who has a close-cropped white beard, chiseled cheekbones and hazel eyes so deep-set that it often looks like he’s squinting. Investing in kelp farming now could potentially benefit marine life in the future. Price has found evidence that sugar kelp has an especially high capacity for absorbing CO2 and thus lowering the acidity of the surrounding water. Carbon dioxide is the cause of ocean acidification, one of the myriad stressors responsible for destroying coral reefs and preventing mollusks from building their shells. “The ocean is a sponge for carbon dioxide,” says Nichole Price, senior research scientist and director of the Center for Seafood Solutions at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine. Those changes aren’t good, but kelp farming has the potential for environmental good. “But the changes that are occurring are undeniable.” “I think we have a long time before that happens in Maine,” says Susie Arnold, a marine scientist at Maine’s Island Institute, who works with fishermen to diversify their businesses by including aquaculture, like kelp farming. All they need to do is look at what happened in the early 2000s in places like Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the Long Island Sound, where once-robust lobster fisheries have become commercially extinct due to the continually warming waters. But lobstermen know better than to celebrate. This, in addition to proactive conservation efforts implemented over the years, has accounted for the flourishing of the lobster population lobster are thriving in the slightly warmer waters. According to a 2015 Science magazine study, the Gulf of Maine is heating up faster than 99% of the world’s oceans. The lobster industry’s unprecedented growth may sound like a good thing, but the cause of it is alarming. Right: Lobster traps and buoys on the docks at Spruce Head harbor. Left: Spruce Head harbor is part of the South Thomaston community in Maine’s midcoast. Spruce Head and Lobster traps at Spruce Head Harbour. ![]()
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