Saving Seafood

UMaine launches marine product program to help drive the state’s ‘blue economy’

August 31, 2021 — A new University of Maine program aims to deepen partnerships between science and business experts in the state’s fisheries, aquaculture sector and other working-waterfront industries.

UMaine’s Darling Marine Center and Maine Business School are launching the UMaine Blue Economy Program, where students, faculty, communities and industry partners will work together to conduct research and develop products related to Maine’s ocean-based commerce, according to a news release.

The graduate education and research initiative is supported with a $50,000 award from the William Procter Scientific Innovation Fund.

“The UMaine Blue Economy Program builds on more than 55 years of creative collaboration at the Darling Marine Center among scientists, entrepreneurs and other professionals,” Darling’s director, Heather Leslie, said in the release. “It will enable us to deepen partnerships among science and business experts while enhancing UMaine’s contributions to fisheries, aquaculture and other working waterfront-dependent industries of the state.”

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Research reveals diverse community benefits of small-scale fisheries

December 22, 2020 — Marine fisheries provide many benefits to coastal communities. Fisheries generate food, provide employment and economic profit through the supply chain, and play an important role in a sense of community and individual identity.

University of Maine researchers Heather Leslie and Kara Pellowe are studying the diverse benefits provided by fisheries in partnership with harvesters and other local experts in multiple regions, including Maine and Mexico.

Pellowe, a former UMaine postdoctoral scholar now at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden, and Leslie, director of the UMaine Darling Marine Center in Walpole, contend that the benefits provided by fisheries are more diverse than is often accounted for in fisheries management.In a recent study published in the scientific journal Ambio, Pellowe and Leslie study the diverse benefits that small-scale fisheries provide to coastal communities. The research indicates that non-fishing families recognize the diverse benefits associated with coastal fisheries. The study specifically investigated how these benefits were recognized in the community of Loreto in the northwest region of Mexico, where both fisheries and tourism play important roles in the local economy, much like the Maine coast.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Potential for fisheries co-management shaped by interplay between formal, informal institutions

September 25, 2020 — The following was released by the National Science Foundation:

Integrating local norms and fishers’ knowledge into regulations helps increase trust in management institutions, and can make it easier for co-management to work.

Those were the findings of U.S. National Science Foundation-funded research by University of Maine researchers Kara Pellowe and Heather Leslie. The scientists looked at the interplay between formal and informal institutions and implications for the co-management potential of a small-scale Mexican fishery.

The journal Marine Policy published their results.

Pellowe and Leslie contend that conflicts between formal institutions, such as government agencies, and informal institutions, such as unwritten agreements among families and friends, can represent a significant barrier to effective fisheries management.

They examined the potential for co-management, where power and decision-making are shared by fisheries managers and fishers, in a fishery that is currently managed through top-down control. They concluded that integrating local norms and knowledge into formal regulations, along with broadened community participation, are necessary precursors to co-management. Doing so would result in more successful fisheries management.

Pellowe regularly traveled to Baja California Sur, Mexico, to work closely with fishers, managers and stakeholders in the Mexican chocolate clam (Megapitaria squalida) fishery in Loreto Bay National Park, on the Baja peninsula.

Like the Maine lobster, the Mexican chocolate clam is a culturally and economically important species, providing food, income and cultural value to many communities in Baja.

Read the full release here

Fishermen adapt to environmental change in varied ways, UMaine study finds

January 7, 2020 — A study published in Ecology and Society by University of Maine researchers Kara Pellowe and Heather Leslie found that regulations and financial resources that influence how people fish have as great an effect on how they deal with change as where and how they fish.

The ecologists, based at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole, took a deep look at how fishermen adapt to environmental and economic change in Baja California Sur, Mexico.

The study includes research that Pellowe conducted as part of her UMaine Ph.D. dissertation in ecology and environmental science, which she completed in August.

Over the last six years, Pellowe has traveled from New England to Baja regularly, working closely with fishermen who harvest chocolate clams (Megapitaria squalida) near Loreto Bay National Park, on the gulf coast of the Baja peninsula.

“Alternatives matter,” says Pellowe. “Having different ways to respond to environmental and economic change is vital for individuals and communities to be able to thrive in changing conditions.”

Read the full story at the Boothbay Register