Captain McDonald Goes to Augusta

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

Captain Genevieve McDonald helps organize, fund raise and manage the town’s lobster boat races.

Last month Genevieve McDonald drove from Stonington to the Maine State House with her seven-month-old twin daughters in tow. That night the statewide news and social media lit up with photos of McDonald holding two smiling girls in her new legislative seat, where she was sworn in as the Democratic representative from District 134. McDonald landed her seat with a walloping 67 percent of the vote.

Before she became Representative McDonald and the first woman commercial fisherman in the state house, she was Captain McDonald of the F/V Hello Darlings II out of Stonington.

“District 134 is the heart of Maine’s commercial fishing industry,” she said. “It’s made up solely of islands, each town in my district has a fishing fleet.”

For McDonald, a seat in the Maine legislature may be the next logical step for a woman who has spent her adult life as a commercial fisherman and, more recently, as an outspoken fisheries advocate. She started her lobstering apprenticeship when she was 23 years old and remembers hearing talk of “closing the zone.”

“I wanted to know what that meant for me, and so I started attending local zone council meetings. I spent probably five years just sitting in the back listening and not saying anything... which is hard to believe, knowing me now,” she laughed.

She eventually bought her own boat. “Once I became a captain I felt like I had more of a voice to start speaking up,” said McDonald.

Her first foray into public advocacy came in 2012 when the price of lobster dropped precipitously. In response she began a Facebook group called “Fishermen Supporting a Stronger Industry,” still relatively early in the timeline of social media. She used the page as a discussion platform to bring together various industry stakeholders including fishermen, scientists, lawmakers and dealers.

“It was fantastic,” she said. “It led to some very productive conversations and sharing of accurate information. That has always been my biggest push — for fishermen and other stakeholders to be informed.”

McDonald closed that Facebook page when she started her run for office. Now that she’s won her seat in Augusta, she has a focused short-list for the issues she’d like to tackle, including addressing the bait crisis, which industry stakeholders fear will grow in 2019.

“Our quota for herring has been slashed, which will drive up the price of any existing bait and we will need to import more bait from outside Maine, outside the nation, more frozen bait from Iceland,” she said. “That will be expensive.”

Augusta, Maine, December 6, 2018, Maine State Representative Genevieve McDonald with her twin daughters at the state house in Augusta on the legislator’s first day in office. Democratic Rep. McDonald represents District 134 in the heart of Maine’s commercial fishing industry. A woman of firsts, the first woman commercial fisherman elected to the State House submitted her first bill on her first day, “An Act to Encourage Youth Participation in the Maine Lobster Fishery.”

McDonald would like to find a way to use salmon “racks,” the head and bones left after filleting, as bait. But she knows that’s a challenging proposal due to the existence of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA), a virus capable of decimating entire salmon farms.

“ISA does not exist in Maine but it does exist in New Brunswick,” she said, noting that salmon from the neighboring countries are often processed in the same plant. “Many cannot be used, but if they’re from a source that is free from pathogens and disease I want to use them for bait.”

McDonald will talk to experts to see if Maine could create a homegrown bait fishery using the sea-run alewife. She’ll also look into federal whale regulations, which she believes have the potential to damage the Maine lobster industry, though she knows the state’s influence might be minimal.

“I think that we should maintain what we’re doing now, maintain the status quo,” she said. “I think the rules we have in place now are adequate.”

She wasted no time in submitting her first bill on Dec. 6, “An Act to Encourage Youth Participation in the Maine Lobster Fishery.” The law would exempt a person aged 12 or under from needing to be covered by a captain’s Class I, II, or III license. “In short, if a young kid wants to go fishing with you and touch the traps, bait, lobsters, it should be legal,” she wrote.

McDonald came by her own love of fishing at a young age, when she spent time around the boats in Bar Harbor.

“When I was growing up, groundfish boats still unloaded at the pier,” said McDonald. “I was always really intrigued by commercial fishing. I used to hang out on the dock and ask fishermen questions.” McDonald is a first-generation fisherman.

She landed her first job shoveling ice out of a fish hold when she was only 10 years old, started fishing at 22 and became a captain at the age of 27. She began by fishing summers in Blue Hill Bay, but migrated to Stonington on a bar bet.

“Somebody bet me that I couldn’t make it in the winter in Stonington. I came down here and got a job in the wintertime as crew on a lobster boat,” she said, “and I did finish the season.”

McDonald and her husband found out they were expecting twins after the legislative campaign was already underway, and they were completely surprised. After lots of discussion and reflection they decided to plow ahead. “Thankfully I married ‘Super Dad’ who doesn’t mind having twins overnight by himself,” she said.

McDonald enjoys the two-hour commute to Augusta for the time it gives her to plan before the workday, then unwind before she switches into “mom mode,” but she knows winter weather will keep her overnight from time to time.

“As a working mom there are some issues that I’m looking at, like early head start and childhood development programs,” she said. “Things that would allow young mothers in poverty to return to work more easily.”

She would also like to increase the penalties for illegally passing a school bus.

“But beyond that, it’s all fisheries, all the time for me,” she said. McDonald submitted her request to serve on the Marine Resources Committee and hopes to become the legislative appointee to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Even in a year full of campaigning and new motherhood McDonald managed to spend some time fishing each week, just because she loves it.

“I love the camaraderie, I love the sunrise, I love the independence, and above everything I love being on the water everyday. I love everything about it,” she said, laughing, “except for the government regulations that I’m now a part of.”