Fishing may not be the oldest profession on earth – other human preoccupations perhaps better qualify – but societies around the globe have gone down to the sea and shore to cast their nets for fish since prior to the dawn of civilization when farming began. For centuries, cod and haddock were fished from Maine’s offshore banks and ledges from the 50 fathom line all the way up “inside” to spawning grounds in locations such as Somes Sound, Fort Point off the mouth of the Penobscot River, Cod Cove in upper Sheepscot Bay and Wood Island in Saco Bay until populations were fished to local extinction on a bay by bay basis, primarily during the last 30 to 40 years.
There’s a lot of shared responsibility for our abysmal record of failing to husband the source of our marine wealth during the past three decades and the heritage that depended on our once legendary bounty of groundfish. Repackaging cold war naval technology for the fishing industry in the form of color sonars and global positioning systems interfaced with digital chart plotters has allowed fishermen to find cod and haddock wherever they roamed throughout the Gulf of Maine. The combination of more powerful diesel engines and notorious rock hopper gear allowed boats rigged with otter trawls to tow nets over rocky and bouldery bottoms that had been long served as refugia and nursery grounds for smaller fish before they reproduced. The federal and state fisheries management systems were not up to the challenge of adapting quickly to the rapid changes in fishing technology, while fisheries stock assessments were-fairly or not-considered to be unreliable, and powerful fishing vessel owners leaned how to game the New England Fishery Management Council system to serve their increasingly narrow interests. Meanwhile consumers continued to demand cheap fish, unconcerned about whether they came from industrial fish farms, distant depleted stocks or the ocean nearby.
In 1991 the National Marine Fisheries Service signed a consent decree after the Conservation Law Foundation filed a lawsuit seeking an end to overfishing in New England. The parties agreed to a plan to begin rebuilding the depleted stocks of cod, haddock and groundfish in New England waters. Everyone thought the settlement was the beginning of a new era. But after years of haggling over new regulations, most groundfish stocks, especially in the biologically complex Gulf of Maine, remain seriously depleted.
The most noticeable accomplishment of the new regulations during the past decade has been to push smaller fishing vessels out of the fishery. Today there is one remaining active ground fishermen between Port Clyde and the Canadian border. You cannot buy a fresh fish off a boat anywhere from Rockland to Eastport. It’s a curious system that rewards the biggest, least conservation-oriented vessels that can roam throughout the Gulf and to the outer banks, at the expense of community based vessels that lack political representation at the decision making level on the council. But that’s how the system works.
The response of government leaders to these manifest problems is a mixture of bewilderment and resignation: if nothing has yet worked to rebuild stocks and if we are witnessing a Darwinist survival of the fittest drama, the prevailing opinion is that there is nothing we can do about it. Many environmentalists, who do not distinguish between one type of fishing operation and another, applaud the contraction of the fleet as a sign of progress, even though the roving bandits remain. And fisheries managers actively cooperate in the extinction of community based fishing since managing a few big boats, however difficult, is easier than managing lots of smaller boats.
Into the midst of this unfolding tragedy the Midcoast Fisherman’s Association (MFA) has appeared, the easternmost community-based fleet of groundfish vessels on the Maine coast. Organized initially by a coop of 10 local family-owned boats in Port Clyde, these fishermen have done the unthinkable: they have agreed to re-rig their boats to be less destructive of the marine habitats where they fish; they have eliminated rock hopper gear that kill juvenile fish, they have increased the mesh size at their cod ends to eliminate by-catch, they make shorter tows at slower speed to save on fuel and to harvest higher quality fish, and they are actively participating in a research program, designed in part by scientists at the Island Institute and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, to determine if these changes make an ecological difference.
Although the management system neither recognizes nor rewards these voluntary changes, MFA has also decided to present their case directly to consumers. With the Island Institute’ help, they have set up the nation’s first Community Supported Fisheries (CSF) program, branded as Port Clyde Fresh Catch, whereby customers buy shares in the harvest similar to the community supported agricultural model. They sold out the shares they thought they could reasonably handle this summer and raised $22,000 prior to going fishing, even though consumers get whole (gutted) fish they have to learn how to fillet themselves in two deliveries a week and they are still adding new shares. Port Clyde Fresh Catch customers pay $3 a pound for whatever comes in-cod, haddock, pollock, gray sole, or monkfish tails for a superior product-instead of $6 or $8 or more dollars at a supermarket. Last week most of these species were fetching between 60 cents and $1.40 a pound at the Portland Fish Exchange where the remainder of MFA’s fish is sold.
The public response has been overwhelmingly gratifying. According to Kim Libby, who coordinates the sale of Port Clyde Fresh Catch for MFA, “our customers are like new friends, they thank us every time for doing this. They say they never realized the difference between fresh fish and what they buy in the grocery store.” MFA has just set up their second CSF program in Belfast and other communities have called interested in starting their own program as well. The ultimate test of this model will be in whether it enables fishermen to catch fewer fish of higher quality with less environmental impact and to get more for it before the last community-based fleet is regulated out of existence. Stay tuned; it’s too close to call.