Fisherman Turned Foreign Affairs Expert Tapped As State’s Fisheries Chief

by Laurie Schreiber

Norman Olsen, a foreign affairs expert and commentator who is also a former commercial fisherman and fisheries regulator, has been newly named as Gov. Paul LePage’s nominee for the position of commissioner for the Department of Marine Resources.

Former Commissioner George Lapointe stepped down January 5, according to Marine Patrol Chief Joseph Fessenden, who stepped in as acting DMR commissioner on January 6. Olsen’s nomination will go before the legislature’s Marine Resources Committee for consideration on January 20.

According to his website, olsenglobal.com, Olsen is an independent foreign affairs commentator, sailor and outdoorsman.

“In a 26-year career with the U.S. State Department, he served in Jamaica, Norway, Washington, The Marshall Islands, Israel and the Gaza Strip, Geneva, Kosovo, and Moldova,” his website said. “A member of the Senior Foreign Service, he was most recently associate coordinator for counter-terrorism at the State Department in Washington, D.C.”

Reached at his home in Cherryfield, Olsen said that, prior to his career in foreign service, he was a commercial fisherman who comes from an extended fishing family. Olsen said he was born in Cape Elizabeth and became the fourth generation in his family to take up commercial fishing.

“My father, grandfather and great-grandfather all fished,” he said. “I started lobstering when I was 12.”

As a young man, Olsen went on to pursue many types of Maine fisheries, and also worked on boat construction and maintenance. At the same time, he had an interest in journalism, so he and a friend started a small newspaper in Portland. Less than a year later, that went belly up, but Olsen went on to write about the marine fisheries and waterfront news for the Portland Press Herald.

He became the first executive director of the Maine Fishermen’s Cooperative Association, served as a member of the Portland Fish Pier task force, and then became a member of the New England Fisheries Management Council.

He subsequently moved to Maryland, where he helped to manage a fleet of surf clam and ocean quahog boats.

“We had a very well-regulated fleet,” he said. “It’s still one of best managed fisheries in U.S.”
He had applied to the Foreign Service before leaving Maine, and was finally accepted at the close of 1982. His career took him into hostile areas as he carried out peace-keeping and counter-terrorism duties in hotspots such as Kosovo and the Gaza Strip.

Olsen retired from the Foreign Service in 2008 and moved to the house he had bought in Cherryfield several years previously. Until recent, he has been a Special Operations Force consultant, training military personnel in culture and communications at bases around the U.S.
Olsen said it was the legacy of fishing both in his family and in the state of Maine that prompted him to apply for the top spot at the Department of Marine Resources.

“I was very pleased and surprised that [Gov. LePage] offered me the job,” he said. “I have this legacy of fishing and it comes from my family. We’re all involved in the fisheries, and we have a deep commitment to it. My grandfather had nine brothers and sisters, and every one of those families was involved in the fisheries. It was our way of life. And I always felt saddened that I was not more effective in the early days of fishery management at getting responsible fishery management in place because, had we done so, we would now have minimized decades of trauma for today’s fishermen. We’re in a new era of ensuring the sustainability of the fisheries. Without the fishing industry, we will lose a huge part of Maine’s culture….It’s critically important to maintain those jobs. From Portland south there are other opportunities, but for the rest of coast, it can be pretty desperate. So if we want the fisheries to be handed down, then we have to make to make sure it’s sustainable.”

Maine Lobstermen’s Associa- tion Vice President Jim Dow said the MLA board found Olsen’s resume to be impressive.

“He came in under the radar, so no one knows him well,” said Dow. “He sounds well-connected and he has excellent experience, so we’re looking forward to getting to know him and work with him.”

The MLA had certain priorities for a nominee, he said.

“We wanted somebody, obviously, who was familiar with the fisheries—and with the state of Maine’s fisheries,” Dow said. “And it was important for us to have someone who could represent us well on the regional councils.”