Small family businesses in Maine, especially in fisheries, remain under pressure by larger competitors, older generations wanting to get out of the business and more recently, by changing water temperatures and species mismanagement, both of which can limit seafood diversity for anyone earning their living from the sea.On a recent visit to Millers’ Wharf in […]
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Small family businesses in Maine, especially in fisheries, remain under pressure by larger competitors, older generations wanting to get out of the business and more recently, by changing water temperatures and species mismanagement, both of which can limit seafood diversity for anyone earning their living from the sea.
On a recent visit to Millers' Wharf in Tenants Harbor, I sat on the wharf on lobster traps, chatting in the sun and smelling the fresh breeze off the lower Penobscot, with Josh Miller, a third-generation lobsterman, and Merritt Carey, a lawyer turned entrepreneur. They talked about how only a year before, Josh's father Peter and his three uncles who own the wharf were ready to throw in the towel and sell it.
In a video at CEI's annual meeting in March, Josh, who began fishing at age 3, said, “When I started fishing you could set your watch to what happened year after year, when the lobster would come, when the mackerel would be in the harbor to catch,” he says. “Now it's nothing like that. With the wild swings from year-to-year, depending on the water temperature … you can't bank on what you're going to catch or especially what you're going to get for it. Every year seems to be more volatile and less predictable.”
Peter added that when he was young he could go groundfishing, scalloping, shrimping or lobstering. “There was always a season when I could make some money. Now Josh is just lobstering. I don't see the security in that,” he adds.
A bunch of forces came together around the same time last year to keep the wharf operational, and even diversify its offerings. Carey, who had summered in Tenants Harbor, working odd jobs around the wharf, has strong sentimental ties to the area. Last year she approached Luke Holden of Luke's Lobster and asked if he wanted to buy the wharf. Holden said the economics just weren't right for him. However, while talking to Carey, he looked at a Google map and saw picnic tables on the wharf from the closed Cod End restaurant. He decided to locate his first Maine Luke's Lobster there, buy all the lobster meat that came over the wharf and give half of that restaurant's profits to the Tenants Harbor Fisherman's Co-op, of which he is a board member.
Over the past year, Carey spearheaded the formation of two co-ops on the wharf, the 20-member Tenants Harbor Fisherman's Co-op and the Maine Aquaculture Co-op. The aquaculture co-op's board includes Peter Miller, Carey and Holden. So far, it is focused mainly on scallops and kelp. Josh's uncle Hale pushed to get $250,000 in bond money last year from the Department of Marine Resources' Working Waterfront Access Program, with help from CEI, preserving the wharf through the Land for Maine's Future Program.
So far, DMR's website lists 25 projects in the working waterfront program protecting 42 acres of commercial fishing territory and almost 1.5 miles of Maine coastline. That might not sound like much, but it benefits 940 boats and 1,680 fishermen who land 21.4 million pounds of seafood worth $49.2 million dockside. Working waterfronts also are reduced in value so they pay lower taxes.
Now, just a year after Peter Miller and his brothers wanted to sell the family wharf, the fisherman's co-op has done so well it is negotiating to buy it and keep a coastal legacy going. It's a collaboration model other communities might consider to keep Maine coast businesses working.
