The Island Institute has hired Laura Kramar as a Senior Fellow in a special collaboration between the Institute and the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association (MFA) based in Port Clyde. The collaboration combines new marketing, economic and fisheries-management strategies with traditional groundfishing practices.
Kramar will be assisting the MFA with developing a marketing strategy to promote Port Clyde groundfish as a high-quality product caught with traditional, less-intensive gear and managed in an environmentally sustainable manner.
By using traditional methods and gear that reduces bycatch and impact on the marine environment, the project seeks to help restore the inshore fishery. The initiative also alters the business model currently dominating groundfishing — large, efficient boats predominantly landing large volumes of low-quality fish to bulk buyers in Portland or Massachusetts — to a new focus allowing consumers to support the resource’s recovery by purchasing seafood from local fishermen who fish more selectively. Finally, by rewarding fishermen for changing fishing behavior, the MFA hopes to overcome the resistance among fishermen to try new fishing methods and alter gear to achieve a sustainable and profitable fishery.
“The survivability of small fishing communities in Maine could well be at stake and the success of this project is crucial,” said Glen Libby, who serves as project adviser, chairman of the MFA and president of the Port Clyde Draggermen’s Co-op.
A small village in a town of fewer than 3,000 year-round residents, Port Clyde has the last remaining groundfishing fleet in Midcoast or Downeast Maine, consisting of 10 boats and 15 fishermen. It is the second-largest groundfishing port in the state. But Port Clyde is also a popular seasonal destination and the addition of development pressures to concerns about dwindling groundfish stocks presents the village with difficult decisions about its future.
Kramar’s placement is the latest step in collaboration between the Island Institute and the Port Clyde community. It evolved from a realization that the fishermen needed additional support and coordination to realize their ambitious plans of marketing Port Clyde Fish.
The collaboration began when the Port Clyde Fishermen’s Co-op (a co-operative of lobstermen distinct from the Draggermen’s Co-op) worked with the Island Institute and Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI) to participate in Maine’s Working Waterfront Access Pilot Program (WWAPP) as a part of the Land for Maine’s Future Program. The Fishermen’s Co-op sold its development rights in the form of a covenant to be held by the Department of Marine Resources. It plans to use the proceeds to renovate and expand its wharf. The Fishermen’s Co-op has also received technical assistance grants in tandem with the WWAPP funds from the Affordable Coast Fund, a grant-making program offered by the Island Institute. The expansion project will allow the draggermen, who currently lease a privately held property, permanently protected dock access.
A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Kramar is well suited to the MFA’s goal of adapting the community-supported agriculture model to the fisheries and brings an interest in local, sustainable food production as well as a strong environmental ethic to her new position. While an undergraduate at Appalachian State University, she began exploring marketing and business classes. After graduating in 1998, she gained professional and managerial experience with various businesses, but was particularly impacted by working at Carter’s Farm and Cross-Country Ski; a family-farming operation that also operated a produce stand and outdoor-equipment retail store where she developed an interest in traditional family farming and local food production. Inspired by her experience, Kramar matriculated at the University of Maine, Orono, and graduated in August 2007 with a master’s degree in resource economics and policy with a focus in sustainable agriculture. Her thesis developed a comparative technique that allows a farmer to analyze the effects of farming practices on a farm’s economic, environmental and social sustainability, and Laura also co-authored a background paper for the Maine Department of Agriculture’s ask Force on Local Agriculture.
“The collaboration with Port Clyde is particularly exciting because it combines many aspects of the Island Institute’s programs and goals — preserving working-waterfront access, fisheries management, and coalition-building, for example — into a holistic project that addresses the issues of, and involves, multiple constituents in the Port Clyde community,” said Jennifer Litteral, Marine and Working Waterfront Programs Officer at the Island Institute. “Having Laura coordinate these efforts and work with the fishermen and townspeople daily is extremely important to ensuring success in this effort.”
Kramar herself is looking forward to helping establish one of the East Coast’s first fisheries marketing cooperatives. “I am thrilled to be working on this project with the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association,” she said. “Part of my graduate research focused on the different marketing channels that traditional family farming operations can use to compete in today’s globalized and integrated agricultural markets. Based on research and interviews with growers, my personal conclusion is that community supported agriculture and cooperatives such as MFA are the most successful ways that traditional fishing and farming operations can compete with their large-scale conventional counterparts, because of the market power that collaborative efforts such as this one can provide for participants.”