Sign of Times to Come as Mussel Leader Closes

Great Eastern Mussel Farms has bagged its last haul of shellfish. Local harvesters either supplied the company with mussels or harvested from GEMF-leased sites. Now, the future of those operations is unclear.

According to The Ellsworth America, Aquaculture Harvesters, LLC, operated by Theo and Fiona de Koning from Bar Harbor, worked with GEMF in harvesting mussels from the company’s leases. Aquaculture Harvesters also has a lease application pending with the Department of Marine Resources, in which they list GEMF as a partial shareholder.

“We don’t really know how it is going to affect us yet,” Theo de Koning told The Ellsworth America. “We are planning on doing what we are doing. We hope to keep all of the jobs that we have had.”

Forty full-time employees were laid off from GEMF. The company attributes the closure to several years of increased regulatory challenges, competition from Canadian mussel growers and rising energy costs.

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