October 2022 - The Director's Corner
October 2022 - The Director’s Corner: Origins and evolutions
Photo: Melissa riding a wave made of golf balls, recovered by hand from Carmel Bay by a passionate young woman named Alex Weber, from the Blue Innovation Event by Save Our Shores in Santa Cruz at the Seymour Center.
How quickly time flies! I’m coming to the end of my second month in this role, and appreciate many in the community for the time you are taking to bring me up to speed. I’m coming to a place of deeper reflection about the state of play in our local fisheries, what’s important, and how the Trust might support a greater diversity of interests and needs.
In a recent conversation, I was asked to explain how the Trust got started and why we do what we do. In other words, what is our origin story? I appreciated the chance to share because it told me this person was really trying to understand us in order to discern what is possible for working together in the future.
It’s a longer story than I can relay here (and I’m now inspired to write that up for a future article), but in essence, the MBFT was born out of the desire by local leaders to secure groundfish quota and preserve fishing rights for the Monterey Bay region. The new system, nicknamed ‘catch shares’, privatized fishing rights and ushered in 100% accountability to create a safer, more sustainable fishery. Our business model involved leasing groundfish trawl quota (prioritizing local landings), which would partially sustain the Trust, and we also worked to revitalize the local market for all fishery participants, their families, and associated businesses that support them. The co-founders all had some tie to fisheries work, be it industry participation, harbor management, conservation science, and fisheries policy.
Despite our original mission, we soon recognized that fishermen (especially new entrants) were in need of additional resources and tools, like financial planning, pandemic relief loan support, management and science information and education, and training. So we began to curate information and put it out to the community (i.e. the Buoy Bulletin) and created a scholarship program to send fishermen to the Marine Resource Education Program (MREP). We also connected fishermen with new outlets for their fish when the pandemic shut down the market. In doing this, we also fulfilled an urgent need to feed more vulnerable people in our community. This effort launched the Community Seafood Program, which has provided almost 25,000 sustainable, local seafood meals to people in this region.
So, while we remain connected to our origins, we also recognize the need to evolve. Fishermen are masters of this; their uncanny ability to adapt to changing conditions ensures their survival. They are perpetually adjusting, whether it’s out on the water, in the market, the regulations, or the politics of management. When one has to be constantly bracing for change, it’s easy to become skeptical and suspicious. Yet I know that when we work to understand each other and our mutual interests, we can find new ideas and creative solutions that we never could find on our own. In that way, perhaps we do more than survive; we thrive.
As salmon season winds down, groundfish limits and rules change, and we gear up for Dungeness crab season, I will continue to observe and listen. I welcome more conversations about how we can co-create a better, stronger fishing community.