JONESPORT — The Maine Department of Environmental Protection approved changes to Jonesport’s Shoreland Zoning Ordinance, giving Kingfish Maine Inc. 30 months to begin construction on a proposed land-based aquaculture plant on Chandler Bay.
The state’s Shoreland Zoning Act generally requires a project to reach 30 percent completion within one year.
The DEP also allowed Jonesport to broaden the definition of “substantial start” for Kingfish, requiring the company to show only “tangible evidence of physical work on the site.”
Kingfish Maine is the U.S. subsidiary of the Netherlands-based aquaculture firm The Kingfish Co., which uses a land-based recirculating aquaculture system to raise yellowtail kingfish (Seriola lalandi), a fish that inhabits warm waters and is native to Australia. The fish is prized in sushi, and 98 percent of the world’s supply is farmed in Japan’s coastal waters.
Given the project’s scale and estimated $110 million cost when it was first unveiled to Jonesport in 2019, the new ordinance allows the 30-month period to pause, or be tolled, during any further legal challenges to the project. The permit period began Sept. 16, 2026, the date of the DEP’s most recent approval.
Environmentalists and neighbors delayed the project through court challenges until April 2025, when the Maine Supreme Judicial Court rejected their appeal.
The Kingfish Co.’s ability to build the plant remains uncertain. A recent share offering on the Euronext exchange raised only 60 percent of the $4.8 million the company hoped to use for operating expenses.
The prospectus for the offering said the company “will not initiate construction of the Maine facility until favourable legal, commercial, economic, and financing conditions are in place.”
