Guest Column: Maine Working Waterfront Conference November 11-12

By Monique Coombs, MCFA

The working waterfront has been a topic in Maine for a long time. We have reports, legislation, covenants, and lots of meetings. We have worked on how to inventory the working waterfront, define the working waterfront, and how to not just conserve it but help it thrive in the future. What we have never had, however, is a dedicated space where fishermen, researchers, harbormasters, municipal officials, and advocates working on this issue can all be in the same room at the same time. But that changes this November!

Commercial wharfs may be noisy and smelly, but they are crucial for the future of Maine's fisheries. Photo by Tom Groenig

The first-ever Maine Working Waterfront Conference will be held November 12 and 13 at the Atlantic Oceanside Hotel and Event Center in Bar Harbor. The event is organized by Maine Sea Grant, Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, the Maine Coastal Program, the Island Institute, University of Maine MARINE, and the Sunrise County Economic Council. This conference focuses specifically on the working waterfronts that support Maine’s seafood economy — meaning commercial fishing, aquaculture, and the infrastructure that these industries depend on to function.

Since 2016, property values in some coastal communities have more than doubled. Fishermen are increasingly driving an hour or more just to get to their boats because they can no longer afford to live in the communities they fish from. When wharves are sold, the informal arrangements that have sustained fishing families for generations become harder to maintain as coastal communities change around them. The people making local decisions about zoning, harbor management, and waterfront access are increasingly people who arrived recently and love the coast for what it looks like rather than what it produces.

None of this is unknown to anyone in the fishing industry.

The knowledge, expertise, and the will to protect Maine’s working waterfront already exist all along Maine’s coast but what has been missing is a shared table, a place where the people who understand these problems and the people with the tools and authority to address them can talk with each other. Our goal is for Maine’s Working Waterfront Conference to provide that opportunity.

The agenda is built around solutions and discussions pertaining to what’s happening on the working waterfront, what’s needed, what tools exist, and where the gaps are. Attendees will hear about the impacts of gentrification on fishing businesses in coastal communities, methods for assessing the current state of Maine’s working waterfronts, tools for municipal and regional planning, funding programs, permitting guidance, engineering solutions, and strategies for protecting working waterfront from storm damage, and conversion to non-fishing uses.

There will also be field trips to Mount Desert Island’s working waterfronts, including a session specifically on how Bar Harbor, one of the most tourism-saturated communities on the Maine coast, has kept its fishing infrastructure alive.

At the end of the conference, participants will contribute to a Sense of the Conference document that captures the priorities and strategies discussed, a snapshot of where Maine’s working waterfront community stands and where it needs to go. The document will help inform decision-making in the coming years.

For lobstermen, this conference is directly relevant to your businesses and your community. The sessions on storm resilience, infrastructure maintenance, permitting, and gentrification are about the wharves, co-ops, buying stations, and boat ramps that you depend on to do your work, and about what kind of infrastructure we’re passing on to the next generation. It would be good for the people at the conference to hear from fishermen and business owners to influence decisions that affect the future of this coast.

Registration is open now, and the rate for fishermen and commercial wharf owners is $75. There are also scholarships available for harvesters. Reach out to conference organizers for more information. We hope to see you there.

Register at seagrant.umaine.edu/topic-working-waterfronts-conference.