No to the Mahone Bay, Blue Lantern Shellfish Scallop Farm Proposal

We the undersigned citizens of the Mahone Bay surrounding area, as well as area sailors and boaters, vehemently object to the Blue Lantern scallop farm proposal.

The main concern

• The proposed location is in a highly trafficked sailing and boating area, an area also used for island access to local residents. The location is inconceivable in logic, when considering the many options to farm scallops away from such a populous community and sailing/boating area.
• The shear scale of the proposed scallop farm in such a highly trafficked and populated recreational and residential area is disrespectful and offensive to the local community and its stakeholders. The proposal and project is completely ill conceived. The proposal comprises of seven highly trafficked locations totalling 50 hectares, which when putting it into perspective is the equivalent of over 70 soccer fields.

Additional concerns

• No land staging station has been identified.
• No boat and equipment plan has been contemplated.
• The promoters are not from the community and have no knowledge of the marine area or traffic.
• The promoters have no marine or aquaculture experience, and as such should not be granted a license of this scale and scope.
• The promoters have not disclosed to the community their financial plan to capitalize a project of this scale, one that is very capital intensive, and will likely be cash negative for close to 5 years.
• The promoters have not disclosed to the community the source and scale of their financing.
• A project of this scale has a high potential for failure for a number of reasons, including but not limited to; mismanagement, disease, financing, weather events and more. No financial contingency plan for failure, has been shared with the community, if in fact one exists. A cleanup of a failed farm of this size is massive, can have dire ecological consequences and could be very expensive, not a cost that taxpayers should have to bear the brunt of.