F R O M   T H E   C R O W E ’ S   N E S T

We Can Influence What It Becomes



The right to fish commercially is more alive in Maine than in many places.

The pressure for access for coming generations may be relieved some by the recent changes to Maine’s lobster licensing law. However, this pressure is local and regional in origin.

There is pressure being applied nationally to privatize access to marine resources that have always been publicly owned. Could lobster go the way of groundfish under the catch shares program? A program promoted by so-called environmental groups that were funded by pro-privatization money claiming corporate ownership of access to groundfish quota assigned to groundfish permits—would that somehow, magically, make groundfishing sustainable?

The disappearance of groundfish permits in most of Maine has already happened. The gold rush fever in the Maine elver fishery has evolved into structural strategies for high finance aquaculture facilities rather than what might have been the harvesting of mature eels in Maine’s public waterways.

Investment in eel grow-out facilities is well beyond the family-owned, local mom-and-pop operation. Corporations would demand to own elver permits and quota to guarantee stock supply and assurances to investors and banks. A catch shares management approach to elver fishing is on the table in Maine.

NOAA has just designated the Penobscot River watershed and bay a habitat protection area. That will affect the balance of power in the region. NOAA and its Chamber of Commerce overseers have big plans for aquaculture, including finfish aquaculture. Penobscot Bay is already more protected than the open ocean coastal areas to the east and west.

The Northeast Regional Planning Body is concluding its work on the New England section of the National Ocean Plan. The planners call it spatial planning. Some observers say it is zoning for the industrial exploitation of the nation’s oceans—oil and gas, gravel, mining, deep ocean mining, aquaculture, etc.—with little or no regard for the biological reality of marine habitat and life systems. For the fishing industry, in a shrinking world with a growing population, this will be a struggle over bottom. How will Maine and New England retain rights of traditional access to marine resources?

The Maine lobster fishery is now valued over $400 million. Is it vulnerable to privatization? Does it have the clout to stand up to federally sanctioned multi-billion-dollar industries?

We cannot stop the world from changing. But we can influence what it becomes.