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 On October 26th and 27th SERC was the site of a meeting of approximately 50 fishermen, marine scientists, policy specialists and other interested people who are working together to explore the potential for area fisheries management along this part of the coast of Maine. This effort, known as the "Downeast Initiative," is in response to the dramatic decline in groundfishing, scallop fishing, and other commercial fishing other than lobster fishing. Put simply, the idea behind the initiative is that if fishermen are given the opportunity to benefit personally from conservation, ensuring continued stocks into the future for themselves and their children, they will work to conserve the resource. The Downeast Initiative's goal is to provide that opportunity.
Ted Hoskins, of the Sea Coast Mission, served as moderator and convener for the sessions, which were focused on identifying key questions and research that the group will undertake in the coming year to explore the feasibility of the initiative and to prepare for implementation, should feasibility be established. The meeting began with introductory remarks by participating researchers. Jim Wilson, Professor of Marine Science and Resource Economics at the University of Maine, focused on the importance of the assumptions that researchers bring to the research effort. In particular, said Wilson, we make assumptions about the scale of measurements that lead to management decisions that are largely dependent on the accuracy of those scale assumptions.
As an example, Wilson noted that most of the fisheries research to date has been build on the assumption that the Gulf of Maine (GOM) is "one big tub" and that populations are relatively uniform throughout the tub. Following this assumption, researchers will conduct a trawl survey and assume that the results of that survey are an estimate of the average population throughout the Gulf. These estimates become the basis for management decisions.
"But fishermen don't fish on the average," said Wilson. "They fish where the fish are." Consequently, the actual impact of a given size of catch in a particular area may be way out of proportion to what would be the case if fish were, in fact, uniformly distributed throughout the GOM.
 A presentation by Ted Ames, of the Penobscot East Resource Center, and recent winner of a MacArthur Foundation grant for his work in fisheries research, provided specific details to support Wilson's observations. Some years ago, Ames realized that older fishermen were a valuable source of information about where fish were located along the coast of Maine back when fish were plentiful. His research has allowed him to identify what were important spawning areas for cod and other species of fish and to begin to map the distribution of fish and fishing effort during the middle of the last century. Ames' work suggests that, rather than thinking about the GOM as one big tub, it might have been more accurate to manage it as four distinct cod subpopulations, one in the western part of the Gulf, one along the mid-coast, an eastern population, and one centered in the Bay of Fundy.
The idea that meaningful management needs to be at a smaller geographical scale is a key element of the foundation for the Downeast Initiative. The working assumption is that Gulf-wide management cannot be responsive to the intensity of what are, in fact, localized fishing efforts that have different impacts on different subpopulations of fish. The solution, if these assumptions are correct, is to bring down the scale of the management focus. Current thinking within the Downeast Initiative group is that there would need to be more than one level within this re-scaling effort. At a higher level, it might make sense to treat the waters along the Downeast coast, including federally managed waters, as the larger scale unit of management. Within this overall Downeast management area there would be smaller, community based management efforts, perhaps similar to the more locally controlled management that has developed over the years around lobster fishing.
Speaking very generally, this vision for a more local, area-based fisheries management scheme raises two kinds of questions. The first class of questions is tied to biology and oceanography: Is there evidence that cod and other important species do, in fact, maintain local subpopulations? The question is important because, if cod (or some other commercially important species) do, in fact, breed and live out most of their lives in a smaller area, it would then be possible for an area-based group of fishermen to conserve that population, restraining current fishing efforts with a view to restoring the population to abundance for future fishing. On the other hand, if the fish spend a lot of time moving beyond the local boundaries, the fishermen making the investment in conservation would not necessarily benefit from those efforts. Their conservation efforts would either fail, or, if partially successful, would provide returns realized by other fishermen outside the zone.
This requirement for a local lifecycle for stocks is not absolute, of course. Different species will probably be more or less local in their activities, and some "leakage" outside the managed area is certainly tolerable if the preponderance of benefits are still enjoyed by the fishermen making the conservation investment. So, the question is more about the degree of locality rather than about absolute separation of subpopulations. But the question is, all the same, central to the assumptions underlying the Downeast Initiative.
The second class of questions has to do with actually putting such a management program in place, assuming that the biology and oceanography work out. These implementation issues range across regulatory, economic, and social concerns. For example, there is the question of how such an area management scheme could be created within the existing state and federal management structures. Then, assuming that one can answer those questions, there are other questions revolving around the need to create more local, community-based management capability that involves fishermen in management decisions so that they have an investment in conservation and a commitment to make it work.
The late October meeting at SERC was focused on getting the Downeast Initiative process started, not on providing answers to all the hard questions. The group made a substantial effort to identify "show stoppers" and critical requirements for success of a Downeast area fisheries management program. By the end of the two days of work the participants had divided themselves into task groups that will identify the research that needs to be conducted in order to answer critical questions about fish population dynamics. Other task groups will continue work toward identifying available options for making the effort a reality.
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