U.S. fisheries service to open Orono office Atlantic salmon protection agency’s aim

To bolster efforts to restore wild Atlantic salmon in Maine’s waters, the National Marine Fisheries Service is opening a new office in Orono and hiring four people to work there. In addition, three current employees will move to Maine from regional offices in Massachusetts.

The commissioner of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife said Wednesday that he was unaware of NMFS’ increased presence in Maine. Commissioner Lee Perry suggested it was redundant and a waste of money because of the state’s own efforts to restore the endangered fish.

The agency decided to open an office in downtown Orono so researchers could be closer to the fish they aim to protect, as well as to the Bangor offices of the state’s Atlantic Salmon Commission and the University of Maine and its research facilities in Orono.

The interaction of farmed salmon with wild fish has been a primary concern of federal officials and, in part, prompted the listing of Atlantic salmon in eight Maine rivers as an endangered species last year. Federal officials worry that farmed fish may transmit diseases to and breed with, and thereby dilute, the gene pool of wild salmon.

Because salmon spend parts of their lives in both the ocean and inland waterways, they come under the purview of both the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the Commerce Department, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a branch of the Department of the Interior.

The NMFS office will be located at the corner of Main Street and Forest Avenue in a building leased from Dubay Rental Properties in Old Town.

John Kocik, the head of NMFS’ Atlantic salmon recovery efforts in Maine, said Tuesday that he has been spending two to three weeks a month in Maine although his office is now located in Woods Hole, Mass. He said the opening of an Orono office would save him a lot of time on Interstate 95 and allow him to spend more time working with fish in Maine rather than driving here. He plans to move here in July.

“We want to be closer to the resource and to those using the river … to be in better touch with them,” Kocik said.

Joining Kocik in Orono will be two other NMFS employees from the agency’s Gloucester, Mass., office. One is a former fish hatchery employee who will coordinate the efforts of the state’s watershed councils, the groups of area residents, business representatives and fish conservationists that have been formed for each of the eight affected rivers.

The other person will work with local entities that hope to undertake projects requiring federal permits. Under the Endangered Species Act, in order for such permits to be issued, the permitting agency must consult with NMFS to ensure that a proposed project will not adversely affect wild salmon. Marine aquaculture pens require permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and trigger such interagency consultation.

New jobs are being created in Orono for an educational outreach coordinator who will seek to get local communities more involved in salmon restoration efforts; a habitat biologist; a research biologist to focus on the ecology of smolts, salmon preparing to head from fresh water to the ocean; and a secretary.

The agency also has hired three people on a seasonal basis to trap smolts in the Penobscot, Narraguagus and Pleasant rivers.

Although the Penobscot is not now among the rivers covered by the endangered species listing, federal officials have long hinted that they someday may push to have it added to the list.

Kocik said he is hopeful that the National Academy of Sciences, which has just begun a review of the Atlantic salmon situation and will send members to visit Bangor next week, will study the Penobscot issue. The river has been stocked with salmon of several varieties for more than a century, prompting many people to believe that the fish there are far from wild.

Gov. Angus King has long contended that there are no wild salmon in any of Maine’s rivers because of more than 100 years of stocking that has dumped into these waters millions of fish, some from Canada and the western United States. The state filed a lawsuit challenging the endangered species listing on these grounds.

DIF&W Commissioner Perry, who is one of three members of the state’s Atlantic Salmon Commission, agreed Wednesday that it is more cost-effective to have Kocik and his staff working in Maine rather than spending so much time on the road getting here. But he questioned whether the increased federal presence is warranted.

He said one justification used for listing salmon as endangered is that more money will be made available to restore the fish stocks.

“Is the money going to the fish when we build the federal bureaucracy?” Perry wondered Wednesday.

The state already has a salmon conservation plan in place and has its own permitting process, so the federal work may be redundant, he said.

While federal officials said there were deficiencies in the state’s plan, they also said it would form the basis of a federal recovery plan, which is being written.

Kocik said some of the money for the new office came from his agency’s increased budget allocation for the current year and from money for salmon recovery that was secured by the state’s U.S. senators. In addition, the agency has given $800,000 to the state for its salmon programs.

The eight rivers included in the ESA listing are the Dennys, East Machias, Machias, Narraguagus and Pleasant rivers in Washington County, the Ducktrap River in Waldo County, the Sheepscot River in Lincoln County and Cove Brook, on the Winterport-Hampden town line south of Bangor.