Dr. Alexa Dayton and Robin Alden from Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, with McArthur Genius Award recipient Ted Ames discuss potential impacts on the Gulf of Maine from proposed changes to Federal funding and science and management processes at NOAA, and Maine’s Department of Marine Resources
July 27 @ 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Join Dr. Alexa Dayton, Executive Director of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries (MCCF), Robin Alden, former Executive Director and Founder of MCCF, and Ted Ames, former groundfisherman and McArthur Genius Award recipient, on Sunday July 27, 2025, for a lively discussion of the potential impacts on Gulf of Maine fisheries resulting from proposed changes to Federal funding and science and management processes at NOAA, and Maine’s Department of Marine Resources.
We will explore the historical context of the decline of groundfish and how Maine got to a largely lobster dominated Maine fishery over a 40-year period, which has created perilous dependence upon a single species fishery that supports 4,500 individual businesses and generates more than $1 billion in economic return to the State of Maine. We will examine the opportunities and risks associated with a future Federal regulatory and funding landscape that must reply upon a data poor scientific process and de-regulated management, and discuss how this might help or hinder objectives to restore a more diversified, healthy, thriving marine economy that can sustain the test of time.
Dr. Dayton’s work has been focused on the complex interplay of species conservation balanced with economic returns for natural resource such as fisheries, which plays out in the allocation of harvest privileges through co-management and trade-off decisions at the community scale. Alexa also serves as President Ex-Officio of Fishing into the Future, a U.K. based charity that was catalyzed by King Charles’s charitable foundation to build co-management of UK fisheries. Before joining MCCF, Alexa held senior positions at Gulf of Maine Research Institute, University Maine, L.L. Bean and Maine Huts and Trails.