Funds help preserve fishing access State looks to divvy up $2M to aid commercial fisherman, towns

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ISLE AU HAUT – The fortunes of Maine’s fishing industry long have depended upon the number of fish in the sea.

There have been plenty, but as human tastes and technology have changed over the years the populations of several marine species have declined. Many have become overfished in the past couple of decades, resulting in the shrinking of Maine’s groundfish fleet and the current concentration on Maine’s $275 million lobster industry.

But Maine’s fishing industry is not dependent only on how many marketable fish or crustaceans there are offshore. Another related resource in Maine has shrunk drastically in recent years – a resource that the state, with the help of some nonprofit organizations, is trying to protect with voter-approved bond money.

On Isle au Haut, and in a handful of other coastal communities, the state Department of Marine Resources is looking to divvy up $2 million of the Land for Maine’s Future fund to make sure commercial fishermen have deeded, easement-protected access to the waterfront.

According to officials, a mapping project of Maine’s coast recently completed by the Island Institute in Rockland revealed that all but 20 miles of Maine’s highly priced, 5,300-mile coastline is now used for purposes other than commercial fishing. Maine’s fishing industry is dominated by small, independent owner-operators, and what little waterfront property comes on the market most often costs more than what they can afford. Such properties frequently get snatched up by wealthy people who want the land for their private use or for high-end development opportunities.

Waterfront property used for commercial fishing is becoming so scarce in Maine that many residents and officials believe the future of the industry may be at stake. Beals, Boothbay, Cundys Harbor, Port Clyde and Spruce Head are other locales where DMR is looking to prevent privately owned commercial fishing piers from being redeveloped.

Few other communities in Maine, if any, can claim a more vital dependence on fishing than Isle au Haut, where about two-thirds of the island’s 50 year-round residents are supported by fishing income. With the decline of groundfishing, setting traps for lobster is about the only occupation that local residents can pursue 12 months a year.

Local fishermen use the municipal pier to get to and from their boats and to haul gear on and off their vessels, a practice that is accepted informally in many communities where fishermen and their families make up most of the local resident population. At times in summer, when tourists and seasonal residents crowd the mail boat that travels back and forth to Stonington, the aging municipal pier on Isle au Haut can be as congested as any street corner in downtown Boston.

The town is looking to build a newer, larger pier, according to local officials, and may be able to use money from the state program to help pay for it. In exchange for $104,000 from the state, the town would have to guarantee in writing that commercial fishermen would be able to use the municipal pier indefinitely.

“That’s the only public means of getting to the shore,” Belvia MacDonald, the island town’s first selectman, said recently. “We want [fishermen] always to have access. We want to be sure it remains that way 50 or 60 years down the road.”

With so many local residents dependent on the fishing industry, the town is not about to tell local fishermen they can’t use the pier. But still, the idea of formalizing such access is appealing to many.

“We need it,” local fisherman David Hiltz said, walking quickly up the pier from his dinghy to his truck parked nearby. “All the fishermen are getting pushed out. It makes total sense.”

According to Steve Shaffer, another local selectman, it’s not certain that Isle au Haut will get money from the DMR’s Working Waterfront Access Pilot Program, which is being administered by the Island Institute and by Coastal Enterprises Inc. He said the town has to be careful to balance everyone’s needs, not just those of people who fish for a living.

But whether it does or not, there’s no question that something has to be done to help preserve working waterfront properties in Maine, according to Shaffer. Fishing has been a commercial concern along the region’s coast since the 1600s, he said.

“The fishermen have been losing everything – the fish, the waterfront, everything,” he said, sitting at a picnic table overlooking the harbor thoroughfare that separates Isle au Haut from Kimball Island. “It used to be all the fishermen [lived] on the water. You really have to do something to preserve it.”

According to program administrators, the state would own the development rights at all of the project sites being considered for state funding. This way, a property owner could sell a pier or a section of shoreline, but the new owner would never be able to develop it for any purpose that excludes commercial fishing access.

“Sixty percent of our 20 miles is privately owned, which is obviously vulnerable to conversion,” Jennifer Litteral of the Island Institute said Tuesday. “There have been right of ways [established] over a nod and a handshake. This will make it legally binding.”

In Port Clyde, the state would pay the local lobstermen’s co-op $250,000 for those rights, according to Willow Rheault of CEI. In exchange, the co-op would improve its pier so that local groundfishing boats – among the few that remain in Maine – would be guaranteed long-term access to the local waterfront.

“By doing this, the community is securing access for an even more diverse group of fisheries,” not just for lobstermen, Rheault said. “Often on the coast, you don’t see this kind of cooperation.”

The state program is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation aimed at commercial waterfront properties, Rheault said, and has prompted both Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Tom Allen to pursue the establishment of a similar program at the federal level.

Along with approving $2 million for the state program, which is part of the Lands for Maine’s Future fund, Maine voters approved two years ago a constitutional amendment that taxes working waterfront properties according to their current use, as opposed to what their most lucrative use might be. This change in taxation might make it easier for working waterfront property owners to hang onto their shorefront land and piers, Rheault said, but it does nothing to guarantee fishermen future access to those properties.

With that in mind, Maine voters will be asked this November to approve $3 million more for the working waterfront access program. The request will be part of a $35.5 million bond proposal to invest in various programs such as land conservation, economic revitalization, and water and outdoor recreational access.

Rheault said there is a only a slight chance that any of the program funds would be used to convert a nonfishing waterfront property into a commercial fishing use. Among other things, program applicants have to demonstrate that preserving the property is the best option for continued working waterfront access in the area and that there is strong community support for the proposal, she said.

“There is a preference in the program for projects that currently provide fisheries access,” she said.

In South Thomaston, the state is providing $475,000 to the Spruce Head Fishermen’s Co-op to protect one such property – a pier the co-op has leased in the village of Spruce Head since 1972. The money will go toward the $950,000 purchase price of the pier.

David Sleeper, the co-op’s general manager, said Wednesday that they have been thinking off and on about buying the property since the 1980s.

“At the time, the membership turned it down,” he said. “It was expensive for the time.”

Their interest in buying the dock has increased as the number of coastal access points for commercial fishermen has declined. A local marina in Spruce Head that fishermen can use now soon might be converted to nonfishing use, Sleeper said.

By buying the dock, the co-op can ensure that future generations will have a place where they can get to and from the water easily, according to Sleeper. There are several co-op members, himself included, with younger relatives who in the next few years expect to graduate from high school and begin fishing careers of their own.

“They’re going to want to become [co-op] members,” Sleeper said. [Buying the dock] means a lot because of the disappearing access. It is fast disappearing on the Maine coast.”

According to Litteral, this program is not the ultimate solution for protecting working waterfronts in Maine. Because each coastal community’s needs are different, she said, groups involved in waterfront issues in the state have come up with different approaches.

One approach involves educating prospective home buyers about preserving the working character of local communities. Maine Sea Grant, a marine science and education organization, has produced booklets about everyday life in the fishing communities of Jonesport-Beals and Harpswell, where Cundys Harbor is located, and distributed them to local real estate offices, she said.

“There’s not one encompassing thing that will solve our issue,” Litteral said. “But this [program] is an important part of it.”