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Globally, the finfish aquaculture industry has experienced a decline in social acceptance, as the industry has been linked to coastal and marine environmental impacts. The causality, magnitude and intensity of these impacts are contested and controversial. To address these social concerns and perceptions, new lower-impact forms of production have been integrated in planning processes for the expansion of the salmon industry. This paper identifies a range of stakeholder views on coastal and marine ecosystem services associated with the expansion of salmon aquaculture using lower-impact forms of production in Tasmania, Australia. Stakeholder surveys combined with Q methodology interviews were used to capture stakeholders' 'subjectivities' or perspectives—described here as 'preferences'. The application of Q methodology identified three factors or perspectives—'utilitarian ecological', 'ecological primacy' and 'recreational amenity'—which explain the majority of the variance in stakeholder preferences. The 'utilitarian ecological' label accounted for the largest cluster of stakeholders' preferences, while the 'ecological primacy' and 'recreational amenity' perspectives accounted for small subsets of stakeholder preferences. Q methodology was an effective approach for identifying the range of stakeholder preferences for and the relative importance of ecosystem services in these coastal and marine environs. Environmental attributes such as seabed health and water quality were identified as being the most important regulating and supporting coastal and marine ecosystem services, followed by the subsequent flow of benefits to regional communities through employment in the Q results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]