Maine High School Students Design Fishing Future

Fishermen’s Voice Staff

Winter Founder Project flounder traps designed and built buy high school students in down east Maine. Each of the 7 schools involved produced a trap with different characteristics. All schools shared the same information collaborating within each school and among all the other schools in the project via the internet. Fishermen's Voice photo

Students from 7 Maine coastal high schools exhibited the winter flounder traps they designed and built over the winter at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum March 1, 2014. The traps were built with materials used in lobster traps. They include wire mesh, bait bags and escape vents. The students will be experimentally fishing the traps under special permit from the Maine DMR this spring. Students from lobster management zones A through C, North Haven to Jonesport, participated in the project.

The “Winter Flounder” project was developed under the eastern Maine Skipper’s Program. The Skipper’s Program is a project-based program designed to strengthen secondary student’s engagement in learning and economic impact on Maine’s coastal economy. The program has been sponsored and developed by the Island Institute and the Penobscot East Resource Center in Stonington, Maine. Students applied and were selected to work on the project.

The core of the project was collaboration. With 43 students from 7 high schools an alternative to moving students around the districts involved was needed. The answer was a combination of local collaboration with fishermen and research along with distance collaboration with other students doing the same and all collaborating with university Sea Grant programs.

Since the coast of Maine is dependant on the lobster fishery, a part of the winter flounder project was a search for ways to diversify fishing in the future, said Deer Isle Stonington High School principle Todd West. The Maine DMR inshore trawl survey showed winter flounder populations were large enough in downeast Maine to make winter flounder traps a practical test project.

Interconnecting the schools involved in the project over the internet was the answer to getting the wide ranging districts together. The knowledge gained by individuals and individual schools was pooled, shared and and synthesized. Each school could design their own trap based on what they decided would work best. One school thought flounder might respond best to a round trap. A compromise design was for an octagonal shape which would be easier to move and stack.

There were also differences in how the entrance was designed for these very flat fish. Methods for securing the bait included a means of using a cut off plastic water bottle to make it more difficult for the flounder to get at. There was a wide variety of shapes, sizes and material choices selected by the individual schools.

The project, said West, was a way to have students involved in real research and real experiments with a goal of developing and building a functional product. Products like the flounder trap are relevant to communities, families and potentially their own futures. The Skipper’s Program is intended to help students participate in the development of a future for fishing in the Gulf of Maine. Some of the students may never be involved in the fishing industry, but their involvement in a collaborative educational effort with individuals from different communities and institutions in the development of a real solution is an important product in itself said West. Education based on collaboration, the development of critical thinking skills and hands on involvement is the front line of modern higher education.

Finding solutions to the lack of diversity facing the future of fishing in Maine is important for the coming generations. The project was supported by gear and equipment supply companies which donated to the project. Each of the trap designs had unique qualities.

Traps are used in some commercial cod fisheries. Less impact on fish habitat and more selectivity that reduces bycatch are the ofter cited benefits of trap fishing. The students will be fishing with the flounder traps using special permits granted for the project this spring in order to have the testing of the traps coincide with the school year. The results of the students flounder fishing this spring will be sent to the DMR Commissioner.