Brunswick, Maine, U.S.A.-based Maine Coast Fishermen's Association (MCFA) has announced a partnership with the Maine chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to create the Fisheries Trust of Maine, which will purchase groundfish permits and then lease them back to Maine fishers below market rates, ensuring local fishers have long-term access to Maine’s groundfish.
Portland, Maine-based fisher Vincent Balzano, who appeared in a video about the program, called it “a lifeline and a bridge to the next generation” of Maine fishers.
“Without the access these permits provide, I don’t think we’d be able to go out groundfishing,” he said.
MCFA Executive Director Ben Martens said that since fish stocks started declining in the mid-1990s, many Maine fishers have had to make difficult decisions on whether to sell their groundfish permits.
“The groundfish fishery has been a part of the cultural and economic fabric of Maine for centuries. Even as recently as the 1990s, hundreds of fishers plied the waters off the coast of Maine, landing millions of pounds of cod, haddock, flounder, pollock, and ratfish,” Martens said. "Many Maine fishermen made the difficult decision to sell their groundfish permits and focus on other more lucrative fisheries like lobster. Unfortunately many of those permits were sold out of the state, and when they left, our future access left with them.”
TNC Maine began buying groundfish permits in Maine in 2010. Since then, the organization has been leasing quotas back to Maine fishers at accessible rates, hoping to boost the industry in the state by, as the organizations put it in a press release, “anchor[ing] permits locally to preserve future access for the next generation of Maine fishermen.”
These partnerships saved local fishers significant money and often led to “collaborative research projects focused on developing more selective and sustainable fishing practices,” the release said.
TNC Marine Program Director Geoff Smith said that when his organization launched the permit bank back in 2010, "our plan was to eventually transfer ownership of the permits to another mission-driven nonprofit, and over the course of the past decade, the MCFA has proven themselves to be a trusted and valued partner.”
"They share our goals for the Gulf of Maine, and they work with some incredible fishermen," Smith said. "It’s a natural evolution and a great partnership that we’ve enjoyed with MCFA; we’re excited to help them launch the Maine Fisheries Trust.”
Smith added that the partnership has shown him that fishers and NGOs “can work together.”
“Fishermen care about healthy oceans, and conservation groups care about healthy fishing businesses; this permit bank has really been an opportunity for us to work together to rebuild some trust and realize that we have a lot more in common than we once thought,” he said.
The program, Martens said, will not just benefit fishers but all Mainers.
“It is providing hope, it’s providing stability, and I am really optimistic that there can be fish in our ocean. That’s an amazing source of food and protein that we can be delivering to our communities right here in our state," he said.
