With only one staff person remaining due to a tight budget – Patrice McCarron, the executive director, is it these days – and a creaky governance structure lacking a solid business strategy and dependent on member dues, the MLA is facing huge issues that collide with an industry’s ability to make a living and a way of life for whole communities. At this point, McCarron told a packed room during the recent Maine Fishermen’s Forum, the MLA has a core membership but not total industry buy-in. And yet all of the industry faces massive issues, including the job’s economic viability in the face of price drops and fuel and bait increases, whale rules, bait shortages, effort reduction, and problems at the state level. Last summer, the MLA sent surveys to 1,300 lobstermen, receiving a 13 percent return, to get their input on how MLA could serve them better. Based on the response, the board drafted a new vision that advocates for a sustainable lobster resource and the communities that depend on it, with core values that include tradition, leadership, fairness and collaboration. The goal now, she said, is to create a blueprint for the future, starting with a business model for economic sustainability. “What that is, we don’t know, but we need to work on it,” she said. The organization must also embrace collaboration with other organizations, work with other interests, and act as a liaison between government and industry, she said. “It’s not our grandfather’s fishery anymore,” she said. “We all wish to God it were, but it’s not.” The association’s current governance structure is unable to accommodate the new demands, she said. Needed, she said, is more crossover membership in order to diversify funding sources and advisory input. One question to be decided by the membership is whether the MLA should remain a cooperative or become a nonprofit, which would allow them to take donations. “We want to figure out who we want to be when we grow up,” she said. “The goal is to figure out how to make us effective so that with these issues we’re facing, we can be there to make things happen. And frankly, it’s tough to do that the way we’re set up.” Board member Kristan Porter noted that the ability to take donations would go a long way toward helping the industry fund their side of the negotiations on the whale issue, and other issues as they arise. The conservation community, he said, is well funded by donations, whereas the lobster industry is funding their side of the discussion with their own money. The MLA was created as a cooperative at its inception 50 years ago as a solution to the federal government’s charges of price-fixing. The cooperative model exempted the industry from anti-trust regulations, and allowed it to stabilize prices. Another goal is to foster better education and outreach to the industry. “It’s a constant frustration that lobstermen don’t know what’s going on,” McCarron said. “In this day and age, we can’t afford to not know what’s going on.” The board will continue to visit these issues at their next meeting at the end of March. Although there was little enthusiasm or discussion from the fishermen at the session around any of the questions raised, most did agree that having non-fishermen on the board, particularly businessmen committed to helping the industry, would be acceptable. McCarron urged folks to communicate their thoughts with the board in one way or another. “This is a time-critical issue,” she said. In the meantime, she said, the governor’s task force is working aggressively on behalf of the industry. “Let’s face it. We can all slowly bleed to death, or we can step outside our comfort zone,” she said. |
