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April 29, 2013

Aquaculture co. pleads guilty to illegal pesticide use

A Canadian firm owned by the largest aquaculture operator in Maine pleaded guilty Friday before a Canadian court to illegal use of a pesticide that killed hundreds of lobsters near the Maine border.

The Bangor Daily News reported that through a plea deal, Cooke Aquaculture subsidiary Kelly Cove Salmon will pay $100,000 in fines on two charges of using the insecticide cypermethrin, to kill sea lice, in waters frequented by fish in 2009. It will pay another $400,000 in additional penalties for its two violations of Canada's Fisheries Act.

In 2009, four fishermen near Deer and Grand Manan islands found dead lobsters in their traps and two others found several hundreds of pounds of lobsters had died while being stored in Clam Cove, which is about a mile and a half from Pleasant Point in Maine.

The lobster deaths were linked to cypermethrin exposure, which was traced back to salmon pens where Kelly Cove Salmon was using the pesticide to stop the spread of sea lice, which can harm the farmed fish.

The New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture is the largest operator of aquaculture facilities in Maine, but the company says the judgment will not impact its operations here. Cooke has about 24 aquaculture sites in Hancock and Washington counties that are licensed to subsidiaries.

Industry officials said the company has used legal sea lice treatments in Maine in the past several years and there were no reports of unusual lobster deaths, but the paper reported that the company's guilty plea has resurrected some concern from Maine's lobster industry over such pesticide use.

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