Maine lobsterman, researcher wins $500,000 ‘genius’ grant

STONINGTON – Ted Ames, a local fisherman and independent researcher who has advocated for fisheries stewardship in the Gulf of Maine, has been named a MacArthur Fellow, a prestigious award given annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago.

Ames is one of 25 MacArthur Fellows named this week by the foundation and will receive an unrestricted $500,000 grant over the next five years.

The fellows are selected for their creativity, originality and potential, according to Foundation President Jonathan F. Fanton. Ames and the other fellows were notified by phone within the past few days.

“The call can be life-changing, coming as it does out of the blue and offering highly creative women and men the gift of time and the unfettered opportunity to explore, create and contribute,” Fanton said in a prepared statement.

In addition to Ames, this year’s class of fellows includes a molecular biologist, a sculptor, a conservation biologist, a laser physicist, a violin maker and a photographer.

Ames was still reeling from the news just days after being notified of the grant.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather,” he said. “I’m still not sure why they ended up with me.”

“It’s wonderful,” he added. “Just great.”

Since its inception in 1981, the MacArthur Foundation “genius grants” program has recognized the critical role played in society by highly creative people working across a wide spectrum of activity. There is no application procedure, and potential fellows are nominated by a board of more than 100 people from a broad range of backgrounds.

“The new MacArthur fellows illustrate our conviction that talented individuals, free to follow their insights and instincts, will make a difference in shaping the future,” said the program’s director, Daniel J. Socolow. “As individuals, each is highly focused, tenacious, and creative. As a group …[they] are bold and risk-taking people changing our landscape and advancing our possibilities.”

The grants are unrestricted and the fellows have no obligation to report back to the foundation about how the funds are used.

Ames, a 66-year-old Vinalhaven native who is both a lifelong fisherman as well as a scientist, was recognized for the research he has done that could help restore depleted groundfish stocks in the Gulf of Maine. The foundation noted that he has “fused the roles of fisherman and applied scientist in response to increasing threats to the fishery ecosystem resulting from decades of over-harvesting.”

That refers specifically to a study Ames conducted, published last year in Fisheries, the Journal of the American Fisheries Society, which drew on the memories of past generations of local fishermen to reconstruct the distribution of cod in the 1920s and ’30s.

“They gave us incredible information about where and when they were fishing for cod and haddock and where and when those fish were spawning,” Ames said. “Up to this point, information of that type was not collected by scientists. It was always unacceptable. We developed a protocol to validate those historical references.”

Ames matched the information from fishermen with previously published scientific data about the cod fishery and current cod distribution and plotted that on GIS, a computer-mapping program, revealing distinctive populations of cod in the gulf, as well as specific spawning, nursery and wintering areas that, he said, still exist and need to be protected if there is to be a hope of rejuvenating the cod fishery.

“His studies, reinforced by a rigorous methodology, draw distinctively from the anecdotal experiences of aging fishermen to map historical patterns and chart the evolution of current conditions,” according to the foundation’s assessment. “His work paints a scientifically compelling picture of the complexity of the fish population structure in the Gulf and identifies new strategies for individual and institutional marine management in the area.”

An independent fisherman and researcher, Ames received a master’s in biochemistry from the University of Maine in Orono in 1971. He is a founding member of the Stonington Fisheries Alliance and served as executive director of the Maine Gillnetters Association. A former high school teacher, he also served as president and laboratory director of Alden/Ames Laboratories, an environmental testing lab he founded with his wife, former marine resources commissioner Robin Alden.

With Alden, he also has founded Penobscot East Resource Center, a community organization designed to support local groups engaged in marine management and fisheries stewardship.

Ames is currently spearheading the establishment of a lobster hatchery in Stonington designed to restock specific areas within eastern Penobscot Bay over the next seven years. The project again relies on a strict, science-based rearing system to raise the young lobsters and the knowledge of local lobstermen to determine which areas should be stocked and to help in the stocking process.

If the system works, Ames said he is confident that it could be adapted to help restock other fisheries that have been depleted over the years.

Asked how he plans to use the grant from the foundation, Ames related the tale of a fisherman who won the lottery and who said he planned “to keep doing what I’ve been doing until the money’s gone, and then figure out a way to keep on doing it.”

“This gives us a little space,” he said. “I’ve got the hatchery project and the groundfish project. Maybe I’ll get a chance to do some fishing and some writing. I’ll have some time.”