An Overview Of Our Solution
Community Fisheries Action Roundtable
Who is this solution impacting?
Ecosystem
Oceanos/Costa
Community Type
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: América do Norte
Problem
Describe the problem
Community Fisheries Action Roundtable is an innovative approach to sustainable fishery management. We go to fishermen, they are most directly affected by changes in marine resources & often have the greatest impact on the marine ecosystem. C-FAR, a targeted fishermen leadership program, is founded on the belief that the only successful approach to sustainable fisheries is for fishermen themselves to speak for the future of the resources upon which they depend. C-FAR is a deliberate methodology for shared learning & knowledge exchange, achieved by first listening & creating the space where fishermen can talk honestly about their resource concerns without fear of retribution, followed by long term sharing of information.
Biodiversity Impact
Elinor Ostrom earned the Nobel Prize in Economics (2009) for her work on community-based governance. Gutierrez et al (2011) examined community based fisheries around the world & found strong fishery leadership to be critical to their success. Prior to this well-deserved recognition, in 2008 Penobscot East Resource Center developed the Community Fisheries Action Roundtable (C-FAR) designed to support leadership development within fishing communities. The first step to C-FAR is the exchange of fishermen’s ecological knowledge. Older fishermen in these communities have knowledge of species’ life histories, migration patterns, etc. They have also seen what unconstrained technology & effort can do to a resource they thought to be inexhaustible. In fishing communities there is a preexisting structure to the passing on of both historical & fishing knowledge. C-FAR taps into this educational culture by engaging older fishermen to ignite younger fishermen’s curiosity of how a diverse ecosystem functions. We have enlisted several older fishermen & their knowledge in specific C-FAR projects. A great example is that of a local fisherman who, over decades, has observed significant changes in intertidal habitats, distribution of productive clam flats, & the decline of scallops. We are currently engaging other fishermen to describe their own observations toward documenting the change & formulating hypotheses. Without the intergenerational exchange of knowledge & this initial fisherman’s courage in leadership - younger fishermen would otherwise accept this ecosystem state as normal.
Solution
8. The Gulf of Maine marine ecosystem has changed significantly over the past 30 years. What was once a diverse & abundant system has become one with compromised ecological resilience. Trophic complexity has been functionally reduced due to overfishing & changes within watersheds & now a single species remains in abundance: lobster. The exceptionally lucrative short-term incentives outshine the long-term concern regarding socio-ecological stability such that political debate supports lobster above efforts to restore diverse fishery species abundance. This exacerbates the dependence on lobster & further weakens the resilience of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem & coastal communities. This socio-political feedback loop is called a Gilded Trap (Steneck et al 2011) & it poses a powerful & long-term threat to biodiversity in the Gulf of Maine. 9. C-FAR is a deliberate process to build long-term transformative change in the cultural & political discourse around marine management. Building community capacity to create this change & have it be self-sustaining long into the future is our goal. With only four years in practice, C-FAR is already producing results with exciting implications for restoring long-term biodiversity. The Maine Department of Marine Resources recognized C-FAR for its impact on scallop management discussions identifying areas to close for 3 years with the objective of restoring scallop abundance in state waters. We continue to work with groups of scallop fishermen in monitoring the closed areas & designing sustainable harvest rules for the rebuilt areas. // We work with fishing communities from Penobscot Bay islands to the Canadian border covering 150 mi (241 km) as the crow flies. These communities fish the extent of the continental shelf out 25 nautical miles. Therefore, we consider our solution to be applied across the marine environment upon which our communities depend: 85,000 hectares. This area has been identified by National Atmospheric and Administration's Northeast Fisheries Science Center as a unique ecosystem area, more closely tied to the Scotian Shelf in Canada than to the rest of the Gulf of Maine. This is of great significance given that the New England Fishery Management Council is moving toward ecosystem based fisheries management. It is also the shelf off the Penobscot River. Pending dam removal on the Penobscot will open 1000 miles river habitat to sea run fish in the next five years. The C-FAR process is a means to enlist fishermen and fishing communities in embracing and contributing their knowledge to these new approaches and new opportunities.
Replicability
How many years has your solution been applied? 4 years // Have others reproduced your solution elsewhere? No // As marine science & policy professionals who have worked on the ground with fishermen & fishing communities, we catalyze the brainstorming process & facilitate the interpersonal connections necessary to make this solution successful. We have a vision of what is possible for these communities to achieve & of what a diverse ecosystem can provide. We are precognizant of what knowledge & steps would be needed to attain this goal and, to this end, we manage the support, outreach & education efforts required by growing fishery leaders. The C-FAR team brings unique expertise to this work. Ted Ames, fisherman & fisheries historical ecologist won a MacArthur award for integrating fishermen's knowledge with science. Robin Alden is former Maine Commissioner of Marine Resources who developed the lobster zone governance system. Dr. Carla Guenther, a marine fisheries scientist, has worked collaboratively with fishermen in Mexico, Solomon Islands, & California. Ted Hoskins has organized & supported fishermen & fishing communities as a minister & fisheries organizer in Maine & Belize. Our role is supplying the hope & the vision to see what regulatory processes fishermen can (and cannot, at times) affect so that we sustain fishermen's willingness to participate & their new skills until there are demonstrable outcomes that build their confidence & attract others. Right now we are using state management processes, specifically in the scallop fishery. We are also setting the stage to work on the new ecosystem based management in federal waters.
Human Well Being and Livelihood Impact
In a region where man & sea are integrally connected, the coastal communities of eastern Maine face the most dire consequences of the loss of biodiversity in the lobster-dominated ecosystem & the inevitable fragility that creates. Collectively, communities from Penobscot Bay to Canada are the most fishing dependent on the United States’ East Coast & they are precariously dependent on lobster. Fishery landings in eastern Maine totaled $180,147,617 in 2010, & lobster contributed $156,439,837 (87%) to this total! Roughly 2000 licensed fishermen spread across 50 coastal communities along 2000 miles of coastline derive a majority of their income from fishing. These are remote communities with a total population of 47,000 & few other options for economic opportunity. This area of the eastern Gulf of Maine lost groundfish over 20 years ago & has since lost other important fisheries such as scallops. Ironically, this provides us with an opportunity to use C-FAR to create an opportunity to learn from the past & re-start fisheries in a new, deliberate & sustainable way, which we are doing through a sentinel fishery & deliberate, C-FAR group processes with younger fishermen. The very future of these communities depends on rebuilding biodiversity for ecosystem & economic resilience. At the same time, C-FAR is building social resilience that will be essential as the inevitable effects of climate change impact these resource-dependent communities. // At the heart of C-FAR is Penobscot East's vision that eastern Maine communities can fish forever if they speak for the future of the ecosystem effectively -- through fisheries management & governance. Everything we do involves community & takes its cue from the community. This does not happen overnight. We recognize the long term sustainability of such a community effort is not going to be real without the long term support & education of multiple generations of fishermen to enact a cultural change one fisherman at a time. We aim to build a critical mass of fishermen who understand ecosystem processes & have the skills to constructively participate in marine management for the future of the resource, fishing businesses, & their communities. A fisherman from Jonesport commented on C-FAR this past spring, “If people participate, they would find that something like this could be hopeful. Most of us are thinking about our communities’ success.â€C-FAR is building a cadre of fishermen, with varied skills, because depth in leadership will enable communities to be resilient in the face of economic, climate, & ecological changes. Maine’s lobster fishery is famous for its effective self-governance & self-enforcement & we hope to apply some of these techniques to recovered species’ management. Most of the fishermen in eastern Maine already participate in the lobster fishery & are familiar with such informal institutions; C-FAR works within & builds upon this governance knowledge. This does not mean C-FAR cannot be replicated in other locations or communities.