Five people will lose their jobs.
By Caroline King
Special to the Sun Journal

RANGELEY – Fish from outdoor salmon tanks were piled more than 8 feet high in a truck last month to be taken to a fishmeal plant for pet food.

Greg Lambert, site manager for Atlantic Salmon of Maine, oversaw the court-ordered destruction of half a million hybrid salmon.

The salmon were ruled by the court to be of non-North American stock and therefore a hazard to North American breeding populations.

Atlantic Salmon of Maine will close its Oquossoc hatchery facility next spring following the transfer of the remaining 500,000 fish, which are not hybrids.

The facility’s closure will mean the loss of five full-time jobs, including Lambert’s, and several seasonal positions.

The process of destroying 500,000 fish took one day, but those fish, Lambert said, “represent a year of hard work, which is going into the back of a truck.”

The salmon were hatched in Oquossoc a year ago and had grown to about 8 to 10 inches long.

The fish were being prepared for the company’s holding tanks in the Atlantic Ocean next spring, where they were to have grown to full size (10 to 15 pounds) after which they would be harvested for human consumption.

The salmon were a hybrid type developed by Atlantic Salmon of Maine. The U.S. Federal Court in Portland ruled that the fish could not be stocked in the ocean or any other body of water, leading to the action by the hatchery.

In the end, “There is no place to put them,” Lambert said, and the fish were destroyed.

The court decision was upheld by the U.S. Appellate Court in Boston.

Atlantic Salmon of Maine has been growing this type of hybrid fish for the past seven years. The hybrid fish was developed from a variety of fish strains shown to grow best in the waters of Maine, according to Lambert.

Atlantic Salmon of Maine has owned the Oquossoc hatchery since 1988, but there has been a hatchery in Oquossoc since the early 1900s. The site, which is approximately 5 acres, has more than 270 fish tanks that hold as many as 40,000 fish each.

“It’s a good place to have a hatchery; it is supplied with good, fresh water from Rangeley Lake,” Lambert said. “Fishery jobs are few and far between,” Lambert said. “People are still shocked and disappointed by the news that the facility will be shutting down.”

The company hopes to purchase smolts from Canadian hatcheries in order to maintain its business after the close of the Oquossoc hatchery, but so far none those hatcheries meets the U.S. Fish and Wildlife restrictions, Lambert said.

Copy the Story Link