Maine’s farmed-salmon industry is making a comeback at Cooke Aquaculture’s salmon cage, on Cobscook Bay, and that’s a good omen for New England’s aquaculture sector. The company, AP’s Jerry Harkavy reports, plans to open a now idle processing plant next year.

Five years ago, the industry pretty much collapsed when the three biggest firms in the business left the state. Their woes included the federal decision to classify wild Atlantic salmon in the area as endangered: There were fears that escaping farmed salmon would infect the wild ones with diseases and/or interbreed with them, threatening the genetic makeup of the latter. Further, there was concern about the fouling of water in the pens where the fish are kept with overfeeding and fish excrement.

But much better netting for the fish pens, new feeding systems that don’t overfeed the salmon (aided by underwater cameras), a rule that lets the pens remain empty for a time after fish are harvested, and steam-cleaning and disinfecting the pens in the fallow period seem to have stopped the disease and pollution problems.

If this happy experience (except for the fish!) continues, coastal fin-fish aquaculture, which should have great promise for New England, can dramatically expand, with good jobs. Salmon farming is a substantial business in Canada, Scotland, Norway and Chile.

We think it and the farming of other finfish can do well here if proper safeguards are enforced.