Do you favor a $7,000,000 bond issue to facilitate the growth of marine businesses and commercial enterprises that create jobs and improve the sustainability of the State’s marine economy and related industries through capital investments, to be matched by at least $7,000,000 in private and other funds?
Maine’s fisheries are a defining part of the state’s economy, but they face an uncertain future.
In the Gulf of Maine, cod are struggling to recover from decades of overfishing, and the amount fishermen are allowed to catch dropped 80 percent between 2011 and 2012. The restrictions on shrimp catches are even tighter. Regulators late last year shut down the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery for the 2014 season. It was the first time in 35 years the fishery had been entirely shut down.
The future is even uncertain for the lobster, which was responsible for 69 percent of the value of Maine’s seafood landings in 2013, according to the state Department of Marine Resources. Climate change is affecting the composition of species in the Gulf of Maine, and there’s evidence lobsters are starting to move northeast to cooler waters.
With potentially wholesale changes in store for Maine’s fisheries, the state’s seafood trade needs to have the ability to adapt and still realize value from one of the state’s key sectors. Question 7 on the November ballot is an acknowledgment of the critical importance of Maine’s fisheries and a nod to the need for planning for their future. The ballot initiative deserves voters’ support.
The $7 million at stake in Question 7 would pay for new infrastructure that allows crucial and advanced research and development to happen in Maine’s seafood sector. That research could lead to improved fisheries management techniques, the development of new value-added seafood products, or it could lead to something that isn’t even on our radar.
Question 7 sets up a genuine competition — unlike the competitions for bond funds set up by questions 4 and 5 — for the $7 million award, which would be administered by the Maine Technology Institute. That competition would require research, commercial fishing and business interests to come together to submit a proposal for the money. The bond’s backers call it a “port-to-plate” strategy to grow employment in Maine’s seafood sector.
The competition also would require those interests to assemble $7 million from other funding sources. And the research aspect of any proposal could take advantage of a $20 million grant a collaborative of Maine universities recently received from the National Science Foundation to research ecologically sustainable aquaculture.
Maine has woefully underinvested in research and development in recent years, and the state has failed to stick to a consistent strategy when making its investments. We would have preferred to see the $7 million proposed in Question 7 funneled through the Maine Technology Asset Fund, where the competition wouldn’t be limited to one sector that might or might not offer the best return on the state’s R&D investment.
Still, the economic importance of Maine’s fisheries is clear, and Question 7 offers Maine a chance to prepare for a future in an industry that’s going to require adaptation.