Cod recovery or collapse. Lobster boom or bust. Urchin industry or tapped-out gold rush. Clam flats or empty mud. An ocean on the mend or forever damaged. Fishing village or summer colony.

The first six installments of this newspaper’s seven-part series, “Changes in the Gulf,” present a situation that cannot be described as simply bleak. Nearly every aspect of the Gulf of Maine, from the status of specific stocks to the prognosis for an entire sea, is dogged by such descriptives as puzzling, poorly understood, mystifying.

Despite the uncertainty, a few things are clear: the arms race in fishing technology has reached the point of mutually assured destruction; the distrust between fishermen and fisheries managers has bred disaster; the hunting and gathering techniques that for centuries allowed this small body of water to feed a region cannot feed the world.

Most troubling of all are signs that, contrary to the management practices of more than two decades, the footprint mankind leaves upon the ocean does not disappear with the next tide. The old ways of harvesting a species to depletion, laying off for a few years and expecting it to bounce back have failed. While scientists remain split on a cure, they agree on the malady — hammering one species can knock the entire ecosystem out of whack, from the plants and microscopic critters on the ocean floor to the very top of the food chain. The fragile web of predator/prey relationships is altered, perhaps for good.

The poster species for this sad phenomenon would be the green urchin, the creature that in 10 short years went from marine nuisance to a $40 million business and now to near collapse. And just leaving urchins alone for a few seasons won’t work — the kelp beds urchins kept mowed are growing out of control, providing lush, protective habitat for swarms of tiny predators that feast, among other things, upon larval urchins. To make matters worse, the void left by stripping the bottom of marketable urchins is being filled by a nearly identical variety of no commercial value. This is a catastrophe that no closure or moratorium can reverse.

Obviously, man’s primary interest in managing fisheries is in maximizing the production of that relatively small percentage of undersea life fit to be fried, baked or boiled. It also must be obvious by now that such a practical objective can be reached and maintained only within the context of preserving the full, intertwined range of species, without regard to culinary appeal.

This is called ecosystem management and it’s been quite the buzz phrase for years. It hasn’t gotten very far past the buzzing stage, though, thanks to disagreement among scientists about what it means, fears among fishermen about oceanic zoning, marine sanctuaries and a host of other things they didn’t have back in grandpa’s day, and the continued promulgation of federal fisheries laws and that run contrary to the laws of nature. It’s time scientists, fishermen and regulators sat down together and worked this one out. It may be now or never.

Part seven

While the first six installments largely describe failures of the past, the seventh points to the future, and that is aquaculture. If the Gulf of Maine is to sustain working waterfront communities, it must be farmed, not strip-mined. And it is altogether fitting that the dateline would be Lubec, which, like its neighbors in Washington County, knows through long and bitter experience that the only way to deal with calamity is to adapt.

Maine has touted aquaculture for nearly two decades now, but there remains a considerable gulf between word and deed. State laws, despite recent modest improvement, keep aquaculture a promise unfulfilled — lease site sizes are capped at the cottage industry level, lease conditions seem designed to gobble up profit margins. No wonder that nearly all of Maine’s finfish sites now are in the hands of Canadian corporations instead their original owners, Maine fishermen. No wonder that the state of Connecticut may well succeed in luring to its shores an Eastport seaweed farm, Maine’s only up-and-running entry into a market worth billions.

Maine also has a long history of touting the need for increased spending on research, accompanied by a reluctance to actually spend anything. Sadly, a bond issue on the November ballot for $20 million to feed the research kitty has so far failed to generate strong public support, perhaps because it has failed to find strong advocates among candidates for major state offices. Finfish aquaculture could expand from salmon to halibut, cod and other vanishing species if it had the money to learn how to do it. The commendable yet modest efforts under way in Lubec to farm urchins could restore that valuable fishery if it had sufficient state support. The mystery of depleted clam flats, the puzzle of lobster stocks, the question of whether the men and women of the coast will haul fish for themselves or lug suitcases for tourists — the guessing game has gone on long enough. It’s time for the leaders and voters of Maine to provide the answers. The Gulf of Maine has done its share. It can do no more.