Dana Rice Sr., a longtime selectman for the town of Gouldsboro who also worked as a fish dealer and was active in fishery management issues, died on Wednesday.
Rice had experienced declining health in recent weeks, according to local officials. He was 78 years old.
The town said on Facebook that Rice had been a selectman since 1996 — he is currently listed as the chair of the board — and also was the town’s harbor master for more than 40 years.
“His tireless dedication enriched our community in countless ways,” town officials said. “His spirit and leadership will forever remain in our hearts.”
Rice retired as harbor master for Gouldsboro, which has six separate harbors, in 2022, according to the Ellsworth American.
Rice grew up in Gouldsboro and followed his grandfather into the fishing industry, according to the dedication. He also became a sardine fisherman, selling his catch to the now defunct Stinson Seafood cannery in the local village of Prospect Harbor, and got involved in fisheries management, serving in an advisory role to the New England Fisheries Management Council and University of Maine’s Lobster Institute.
“He was a fierce advocate for fisheries,” Carl Wilson, the new commissioner for Maine Department of Marine Resources, said Thursday. “He participated in fisheries management discussions for decades, and was a trusted colleague. He willingly welcomed DMR staff to his facility. His participation as a member of the Lobster Advisory Council brought insight, experience and respect from everyone.”
In a 2012 oral history interview with the federal National Marine Fisheries Service, when he was 65 years old, Rice recalled how fishermen in the area used to go groundfishing in the 1950s, when he was a boy. He lamented how local fishermen got squeezed out of the fishery over time and had to rely instead on lobster, shrimp, scallops and other species because larger companies were given larger and larger percentages of the groundfish quota, even as their stocks were declining.
“I’ve basically been in the fishing business since I was five or six years old,” Rice told the interviewer. “I don’t care how greedy you are; nobody wanted to catch the last cod or whatever you were taking. It’s sad that it happened that way, because some of the problems we’ve got out here are due to fishery ethic. The regulatory process, more than anything else, locked us out of that fishery.”
Rice also was actively involved in efforts to revive the local former Stinson sardine cannery, which operated for more than 100 years and employed more than 100 people when it shut down in 2010. A few enterprises have come and gone since then, reviving activity at the plant to varying degrees, but the cavernous building sits empty now.
In 2010, Rice said that the eventual closing of the sardine cannery was inevitable, given the reduction in herring catch limits and the slow disappearance of the once-common sight of such canneries in Maine and elsewhere. But he said the news still came as a shock.
“It’s devastating, for lack of a better term,” Rice said at the time. “It’s like somebody died.”
A dozen years later, soon after he retired as Gouldsboro’s harbormaster, the town dedicated its annual town report to Rice, saying he had made a “huge impact” on the community.
“You may know him as the select board chair, former harbormaster, lobster dealer and seller, bait seller, and much more,” town officials wrote in the report. “He is the ‘jack of all trades.’ We thank you and appreciate all the years of commitment and dedication you have given to all and the town of Gouldsboro.”
Josh McIntyre, who has served as Gouldsboro’s town manager for about a year, said Thursday that Rice had missed the last few Select Board meetings because of his health.
Rice was “unflappable” and his death leaves a big hole at the town office, as well as in the town as a whole, he said.
“It is clear he meant a lot to the town and the town meant a lot to him,” McIntyre said. “Everybody is pretty sad.”