An annual weekend event that brings together fishermen with scientists, government officials and industry observers is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Rockport.
The Maine Fishermen’s Forum, which was first held in 1976, is being held this weekend at The Samoset Resort, overlooking Penobscot Bay.
The conference over the years has become both a forum to discuss fisheries policy and management and a place to socialize and get to know other people involved with the industry. And, to longtime attendees, it has morphed into an event where people on different sides of issues can come to agreements that otherwise would remain elusive.
Kristan Porter, a Cutler fisherman who serves as president of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said that staying at the resort for a few days with state regulators and scientists helps each side understand the other a little bit.
“You get to see the other person’s viewpoint and as a person, not as an adversary,” Porter said. “That’s what great about this event. It’s neutral ground.”
The forum began 50 years ago with funding from Maine Sea Grant, when the United States decided to implement a 200-mile exclusive fishing zone along its coasts. This prevented foreign vessels from fishing in the western half of the Gulf of Maine, with Canada having fishing rights to the eastern half.
With foreign vessels banned, and the U.S. government poised to adopt regulations aimed at rebuilding fish populations in the gulf, the forum was a way to get stakeholders together on how to best manage its fisheries
“It’s a great place to air out differences in a civil way,” said Dave Cousens, who preceded Porter as president of MLA.
Sometimes discussions have been tense, whether they have been about lobster gear restrictions or limits on the size of lobster fishermen are allowed to keep, Cousens said. But the ability to continue a discussion later over a beer — or even later than that in a semi-crowded hotel room after the bar closes — can sometimes help fishermen and policy makers come to a compromise.
“By morning, you felt like [crap] and didn’t want to argue anymore,” Cousens said. “It was strategic, but it worked.”
Cousens also noted that the forum has become more family friendly over the years, which may have helped make policy discussions less adversarial. The first time he attended, in 1981, he witnessed a fistfight between two fishermen in the hallway outside the meeting rooms, he said.
“That was my first experience with a cultural exchange,” he joked. “Fishermen would come here to fight, and it wasn’t helpful.”
He added that the policy discussions at the forum, and resulting conservation measures endorsed by fishermen such as bans on dragging for lobster and keeping reproducing females, helped increase landings from 20 million pounds a year in the 1970s and 1980s to more than 120 million pounds a year in the 2010s — which is “unheard of in any wild fishery.”
The volume of the statewide annual lobster haul has declined a little in the past decade, but the annual catch value during that time has stayed higher than it ever was before 2014.
“We’re a success story in the world, and it’s fun to be successful,” Cousens said.
Robin Alden, a former Maine Department of Marine Resources commissioner who co-founded the forum when she was running Commercial Fisheries News, said then-U.S. Sen. Ed Muskie attended the first forum in 1976. Since then, it has become a regular stop for members of Maine’s congressional delegation, gubernatorial candidates and others interested in Maine’s $3 billion seafood industry.
She also said she was of only three women she can remember who were heavily involved in Maine’s fisheries in the 1970s, which is a sharp contrast to the hundreds or more women who work in the industry now and come to the forum every year.
“It fills my heart,” Alden said.
The camaraderie fostered by the forum among fishermen and others who want to sustain Maine’s fisheries for the long term is a big reason why the forum has lasted, several people said. For many, it is the one chance each year they get to see each other face to face and catch up on what is going on in their lives, whether it is fishing-related or not.
“It is amazing to see how barriers were broken here,” said Carla Guenther, chief scientist for the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries. “It is like a family.”