BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 16, 2024
In a recent opinion piece in Working Waterfront, Richard Qualey argued that the Maine intertidal zone between high and low tide should be universally accessible to the public. Focusing attention on beach access is a distraction from the plaintiffs’ desire to have unfettered commercial access to Maine’s underwater rockweed forest, an essential habitat for hundreds of small animals and numerous marine species that are the basis of our fisheries. The law, which has held since 1647, is that the intertidal zone is privately owned but subject to public trust rights to fishing, fowling, and navigating. Rather than supporting Maine’s fishing industry, commercial extraction of this seaweed severely alters the nursery formed by the rockweed forest that is a habitat for many of Maine’s commercial fisheries. I hope the Maine Judicial Supreme Court declines to overturn a unanimous decision the court made only five years ago, for the good of Maine’s commercial fisheries and all the statewide economic activity that our fisheries generate. ~ David Porter, The Blue Hill Peninsula Rockweed Forum, Brooklin