Groundfishermen in Maine are fishing under a new management system, and no one is sure how the fish stocks, or the fishermen, are going to react.
Under the new system, called “sectors” (see sidebar “What is a sector?”), fishermen can choose to opt into a sector with other like-minded fishermen in order to work together to catch a certain percentage of the overall fish available during that season.
Maine’s fishermen have divided into three different sectors, each with their own mission, goals and rules.
The Sustainable Harvest Sector is the least restrictive of the three, and includes boats from all along the New England coastline. According to Hank Soule, manager of the Sustainable Harvest Sector, of the 40 boats in the sector, approximately 25 percent operate from and land primarily in Maine. Many of Maine’s larger vessels are a part of this group. Vessels in this sector are required to report their catch daily, and the sector has the right to close areas to their vessels in order to avoid certain species.
The Northeast Coastal Communities Sector is the smallest of Maine’s sectors and is primarily a hook fishery made up of owner-operated vessels. According to Aaron Dority, director of Penobscot East Resource Center’s Downeast Initiative and manager of the Northeast Coastal Communities Sector, the mission of the sector is “to rebuild a sustainable groundfishery and ensure access for traditional fishing communities.” Therefore, members of the sector are primarily based in the historically-active groundfishing ports of eastern Maine and Martha’s Vineyard, where access to the stock is now very limited.
The Port Clyde Community Groundfish Sector is not, as the name suggests, restricted to boats operating out of Port Clyde. Rather, according to Glen Libby, president of the Port Clyde Community Groundfish Sector, the sector is open to fishermen who are willing to agree to fish within the boundaries of the Gulf of Maine and to restrict their landings to certain Maine ports. The bulk of Maine’s boats, 35 in total, are a part of this sector, with homeports ranging from Port Clyde down to Kennebunk. However, these boats tend to be smaller than the boats in the Sustainable Harvest Sector, and tend to fish closer to shore with fewer landings than their larger counterparts.
While each of these sectors has a different mission and represents a different fleet of boats, there is a general sense of cautious optimism that cuts across the Maine sectors. According to Soule, his sense is that, “There is a real sense of purpose, and folks are going to try to make this work for them.”
Fishermen see different potential benefits in the new system. According to Soule, “one of the hopes that our fishermen have is that this new system will encourage the reduction of discards in the industry. Discards were required in the days at sea system. Under the sector management system, discards of legal sized fished are prohibited. I think its something that all fishermen like”
Fishermen are able to avoid catching fish they would otherwise discard because, according to Dority, “you now have the opportunity and flexibility to move around and look for fish.” Under the previous days-at-sea management system, time was limited and fishermen were forced to catch whatever they could catch as quickly as they could catch it.
Libby sees another benefit to the new management system, “One of the things you hear about, even where there are more fish, is that the quotas are wrong. Sectors will provide more science because of all the monitoring and observing that’s required. We’re going to have a much clearer picture of what’s going on in the Gulf of Maine.”
There has long been frustration for both fishermen and scientists about the lack of information available with which to manage fish. According to Libby, “You have to have good science for people to have trust in it.” With the shift to sectors, which requires a much higher level of monitoring, “you’re going to have more real-time data and the quotas are going to be more accurate.”
Libby admits that this could mean a cutback in quotas over the short term, however he believes that “ultimately it’s going to speed up the recovery and make things better for the long term.”
This isn’t to say that the transition to sectors will be easy for Maine’s fleets. There is fear that individuals and boats could go out of business, and nobody wants to see that happen in an already hard-hit fishery. “People feel trepidation about the new management system,” says Soule. “About half of our boats have gone fishing at this point. The jury is still out at this point in time. Folks are still trying to puzzle out how to work under this new management system.”
However, coming out of a days-at-sea management system that did little to benefit Maine’s fleet, there is hope that sectors will give fishermen more control over their own destiny. As Dority says, “The challenge for sectors is thinking; how can we use sectors to change how we are doing business, bring the fish back, and make sure we have our fishing communities?”
Gillian Garratt-Reed is associate editor of The Working Waterfront