Saving Seafood

MAINE: Sea Grant director stepping down to take helm at nonprofit

May 19, 2017 — A University of Maine official who has led its Sea Grant program is stepping down to accept a chief executive position with the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

Paul Anderson, currently the director of the Maine Sea Grant College Program where he has been for the last 16 years, will join MCCF in September and assume the chief executive job on Jan. 1, 2018.

The decision was announced by the nonprofit’s board of directors.

Anderson will succeed founding Executive Director Robin Alden, who is stepping down after 14 years at the helm of MCCF, formerly known as Penobscot East Resource Center.

The Sea Grant program was one of dozens of federally funded programs that would have lost its funding in President Trump’s original proposed budget.

The UMaine Sea Grant portfolio includes commercial fisheries, aquaculture, coastal community development, ecosystem health and coastal resiliency. Anderson also serves in national leadership with the Sea Grant Association, and is co-leader for the new state-bond-funded Alliance for Maine’s Marine Economy.

Read the full story at The Portland Press Herald 

MAINE: Longtime fisheries advocate receives prestigious ‘Hero of the Seas’ award

May 16, 2017 — Robin Alden, executive director of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, received a prestigious “Hero of the Seas” award from the international Peter Benchley Ocean Awards nonprofit organization.

Named in honor of the author of “Jaws,” the 10 annual awards recognize “outstanding achievement across many sectors of society leading to the protection of our ocean, coasts and the communities that depend on them.” Alden’s award recognizes her career “working at the grassroots, engaging fishermen’s knowledge and participation to build sustainable, healthy coastal fisheries and fishing communities.”

She received the award at a gala event on May 11 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.

“It is just unbelievable to have international recognition for Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries basic approach: that the knowledge fishermen have about the ecology they work in every day is important to a healthy fisheries and our communities,” Alden said in a news release.

She added, “This is a great time for this award. Fisheries are at a turning point because climate change is forcing fishery regulators to face the fact that the ocean changes all the time. Constant change makes real time, on-the-ground observation so much more important than the old approach of primarily depending upon abundance predictions. We — fishermen, scientists and regulators — have to learn how to learn and act together.”

Read the full story at Mainebiz.com

12 “Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood” chosen by White House

October 7, 2016 — U.S. President Barack Obama has announced his choices to be the first ever “Champions of Change for Sustainable Seafood.”

The special awards, established this year as a way to “honor America’s fishers and our coastal communities for their efforts… [in leading] the way to the United States becoming a global leader in sustainable seafood management,” will be handed out on Friday, 7 October at a special ceremony at the White House in Washington D.C.

The awardees are:

  • Robin Alden, the founding Executive Director of Penobscot East Resource Center, Maine’s center for coastal fisheries in Stonington, Maine. She led a path-breaking effort to bring shared management to Maine’s lobster fishery, now recognized internationally as a model for sustainable fisheries. Robin is the former Commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, responsible for Maine‘s marine and anadromous fishery management and enforcement and for aquaculture in the state. She was also the publisher and editor of both Commercial Fisheries News and Fish Farming News and a public member of the New England Fishery Management Council.
  • Linda Behnken, the Executive Director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, which represents longline fishermen in securing sustainable access to healthy halibut, sablefish and rockfish stocks. Linda was a commercial fisherman for 34 years and served on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. During that time, she also served as an industry advisor to the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, the National Academy of Science Individual Fishing Quota Review Panel, and co-chaired the Council’s Essential Fish Habitat committee. Linda participated in the last two re-authorizations of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and was an active advocate for the Sustainable Fisheries Act amendments. She is also a founding member of the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust, which is a cutting-edge financing tool to help new and young break into Alaska’s fisheries and connect communities with their natural resources.

See the full list of awardees at Seafood Source