Vol. 1, No. 2
Headline Back Issues
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Extension Educator Rollie Barnaby Helping New Hampshire marine users navigate challenging waters Portsmouth, New Hampshire -- On a clear April morning lit by sharp, white New England sunlight that carved the outlines of a seagull's wings with a razor's edge against the sky, Rollie Barnaby talked about his passion for problem solving. "You have to appreciate, I'm an expert at nothing," he had chuckled during a preliminary phone call to arrange the interview. But just a few minutes of conversation revealed that what Barnaby may claim to lack in expertise, he more than compensates for with breadth of experience, commitment, and enthusiasm only slightly tempered on this particular day by jet lag. An extension educator with the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension Sea Grant who helps community members make use of UNH resources, Barnaby is also a former school teacher, athletic director, basketball coach, lobsterman, and seafood distributor. One way to describe his present vocation would be to say he helps those in marine-related industries pursue sustainable use of the ocean's resources. More simply, much of time is spent helping fishermen earn a living. At the Portsmouth Fisherman's Cooperative, Barnaby is as at home as the resident orange and white cat that strolls from one office to another. The cooperative's small, no-nonsense building on the Portsmouth Fish Pier also houses a well-stocked coffee machine, and several dry-erase boards noting the comings and goings of evocatively-named fishing boats. It's easy to envision Barnaby as a teacher and coach, his ready smile and warm expression complemented by a direct, persuasive, and often colorful manner of speaking (illustrated, for example, by a graphic description of a recent experience eating hag fish in Korea). Barnaby's personality has likely worked to his advantage in his efforts to build consensus on prickly issues among fishermen, agency officials, academics, and environmentalists -- issues often with relevance to the entire Gulf of Maine watershed. Despite his professional absorption in maritime life, however, Barnaby is likely forego the coast on weekends to escape to the mountains for some hiking or skiing with his family. Even so, his working life remains closely, if not directly, tied to the pier. No stranger to working on the water Barnaby's association with the fisherman's cooperative is a long one. While still teaching, Barnaby had worked as a lobsterman during the summers. In 1978 he left the classroom to board the boat full time, serving for many years as president of the cooperative and as a charter member. After fishing full-time for five years, Barnaby came upon an opportunity to open a wholesale/retail seafood business with a partner. "The idea was to take a year off from the boat and then go back, but then the business took off," said Barnaby, noting that he then sold his two boats. Nevertheless, despite the success of the seafood enterprise, Barnaby said the work was "not fulfilling." In 1988, he found what he was missing. He went to work for the University of New Hampshire as extension educator, helping marine users to identify their priorities and problems and marshaling resources to address them. Fishermen are his biggest clientele, but Barnaby also works with recreational marine users, such as dive shops. Consensus -- more than a catch-phrase Barnaby doesn't harbor any dreamy notions of a fisherman's life as a simple one. And he has concluded that the only way to untangle complex fisheries issues is for diverse groups -- even those with opposing philosophies -- to cooperate. A true believer in the consensus approach, Barnaby said he prefers this method to voting, despite its imperfections, because "In voting, the tendency is to have winners and losers, and losers try to screw up the process." Barnaby also advocates including as diverse an array of participants as possible, because, "You never know where the solution is going to come from." He maintains that people's objectives aren't always as divergent as they think they are. "My experience has been that fishermen and environmentalists often think they don't have a lot in common. But fishermen need a clean, productive environment, so when they get together at the table, they find out that they really have the same goals," he observed. The "pinger project" One example of successful consensus-building -- and one of Barnaby's proudest accomplishments -- is a project that was undertaken to address a problem fishermen were having with harbor porpoises becoming entangled in their deep-water fishing nets. The porpoises' already low populations were further declining because of the entanglements. In 1990, Barnaby met with fishermen, scientists, environmentalists, agency officials, and fisheries managers to form a Harbor Porpoise Working Group. The group dynamic was sometimes trying, to say the least, admitted Barnaby. "There were people who just violently disagreed on the world. We learned that there were some things we were never going to agree on." Nevertheless, participants eventually acquiesced on a goal, which Barnaby described as "reducing the take on harbor porpoises with a minimum effect on fishermen." The most workable approach to accomplish this appeared to be to change the fishing gear. Those involved in the project created electronic noisemakers, designed with the help of John Lein, an animal behaviorist from Newfoundland. The cylindrical devices, known as "pingers," are a little smaller than a soda can, and emit an intermittent, high-pitched beep that alert the porpoises to the presence of a barrier. Experiments so far have shown that porpoises avoid nets rigged with the pingers. According to Barnaby, the devices are now being used internationally to help reduce fishing gear casualties not only of porpoises, but also seabirds, turtles, and other species. Along with the fact that the group seems to have addressed the issue that prompted their collaboration in the first place, Barnaby said its accomplishments serve as a model example of how diverse, even contentious stakeholders can transcend entrenched disagreements to accomplish goals that benefit all involved. A commitment to finding new solutions Barnaby's next effort to help marine users and others learn to overcome their differences will be a series of collaborative decision-making workshops he's developing for New England fishermen. The Saltonstall/Kennedy grant-funded program is intended to help fishers find alternatives to litigation -- which Barnaby described as "expensive and lousy" -- for addressing problems. He doesn't anticipate any trouble recruiting participants for the workshops. Many in the industry "are already convinced that past fisheries management processes haven't worked," he observed. Along with these philosophical routes, Barnaby also involves himself in more tangible endeavors to help his clients, such as creating new fisheries. On a trip to the west coast not too long ago, Barnaby had seen fishermen bringing in boatloads of hag fish. He knew that, while hideous in appearance, the large eels are valued in Korea as a source for leather. Hag fish were available on the coast of New England, but were not being commercially harvested, so Barnaby worked with the New England Fisheries Development Association to provide a mechanism for fishermen in the region to catch and sell them. This new market, according to Barnaby, "gives fishermen something to do" in the off season, and takes the pressure off of groundfish stocks. During the fishery's first year, more than a million pounds (454 tonnes) of hag fish were shipped from Gloucester, Massachusetts to Korea, he noted. Another of Barnaby's current priorities is promoting open-ocean aquaculture. Placing cages off shore to raise fish is the only remaining alternative for New England fish farming as the region's coastal waters become more and more congested, he asserted. Several demonstration projects are planned for next year. A father of five, Barnaby doesn't miss the parallels between his role as extension educator and the role of a parent in preparing a child for independent living. For example, Barnaby helped fishermen in the Seabrook/Hampton area form the Yankee Fishermen's Cooperative, meeting with organizers every month for three years. Then, he chuckled, "They scheduled their first meeting for the board of directors, and I wasn't invited. It was like pushing a kid off on a bicycle for the first time. I felt kind of lost." But with a phone that never stops ringing, Barnaby has little time to feel the "empty-nest syndrome." |
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Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine