Gulf of Maine Times

Gulf Voices
The Saltwater Network

By Arthur Bull

Over the last ten years, fishermen’s organizations, community conservation groups and community development associations around the Gulf of Maine region have adopted community-based management as a response to the economic, social and environmental crises that have been brought on by overfishing, privatization, mismanagement and overexploitation of non-renewable resources.

Undoubtedly, most Gulf of Maine Times readers know of some, if not many, examples of community-based management, whether it is community-based fisheries management, community-based coastal stewardship or place-based conservation organizations. This abundance of community-based management initiatives is certainly a cause for celebration. At the same time, it gives rise to some challenging questions: How is this work going to be sustained over the long term? How will these organizations build the capacity to meet the enormous challenges facing the future? How will community-based organizations get started?

These are the kinds of questions that led to the creation of Saltwater Network. It began in the late 1990s when a group of people working on community-based fisheries around the Gulf of Maine began to exchange ideas and support each other in a variety of ways. For example, a group of fishermen’s representatives from Stonington, Maine came up to Digby, Nova Scotia and met with local fishermen. Around the same time, and with very similar missions, the Bay of Fundy Marine Resource Centre at Cornwallis Park, Nova Scotia and the Cobscook Bay Resource Center in Eastport, Maine were established and began to share information and ideas almost immediately. There were the many other meetings and conferences that led to energetic discussions about the principles and practice of community-based management.

From these experiences we came to a number of realizations about the future of community-based in the Gulf of Maine.

First, we realized that peer support and exchange was essential for this field to thrive and grow. Furthermore, there needed to be some way of supporting these exchanges more formally and more consistently.

Secondly, we realized that resource centers would play a critical role in providing the local organizational, research, educational and capacity-building support for local organizations.

Thirdly, we realized that there needed to be a lot more funding support, from a range of grant sources, including major support from private foundations.

Finally, we realized that, if community-based management were to become a significant alternative in the region, there needed to be some way of supporting new and emerging local organizations.

All these realizations added up to the need for some network that would support and connect organizations working on community-based fisheries management and conservation around the Gulf of Maine. With the support of the Henry P. Kendall Foundation, a core group of people from around the Gulf got together over a period of more than a year to design this new organization. This involved an intensive process of discussion, design writing and consulting.

And so, Saltwater Network was launched in 2001 as a kind of “bioregional community foundation,” created by and for community-based organizations around the Gulf of Maine to support community-based management and conservation in the bioregion of the Gulf of Maine.

The guiding metaphor for the new initiative was upwelling. Like the upwelling process that circulates nutrients throughout the water, Saltwater Network aims to distribute the human, economic, educational and social “nutrients” among the communities of Gulf of Maine, in support of community-based management.

From the beginning, Saltwater Network’s creators saw it as principle-driven initiatives. Quite a lot of time was spent on articulating and testing a set of guiding principles that would keep Saltwater Network on course in the future. Perhaps the most important of these is the principle that “the health of the Gulf of Maine’s coastal communities and the health of Gulf of Maine’s marine ecosystems are inextricably interconnected.”

Saltwater Network’s purpose is to support community-based management and conservation work around the Gulf of Maine, through grant making, convening, development of collaborations, access to learning opportunities and collaborative fundraising.

Moving into its third year of operations Saltwater Network already has an impressive list of achievement. These include:

Providing funding support for new and existing marine resource centers in the United States and Canada;
Providing funding support to local organizations though its mini-grants;
Giving bursaries to individuals, enabling them to attend education events related to community-based management;
Co-sponsoring a study tour that took people from aboriginal and non-native organizations and community-based management organizations, from Yarmouth to Cape Cod, which included conducting workshops in communities [See Gulf of Maine Times, Winter 2003];
Working with resource centers and local organizations on collaborative fundraising and bringing several new grant foundations into the region;
Linking groups around the Gulf of Maine, enabling peer learning and information exchange.

Because of the size and complexity of the region we serve, Saltwater Network has by necessity taken an innovative approach. It works though regional resource centers that provide organizational, educational, research, technical and other kinds of support to local community-based management and conservations groups. These centers also act as Saltwater Network’s “ eyes and ear” on the ground. And finally, Saltwater Network operates as cross-border organization at all levels, reflecting the international nature of the Gulf of Maine bioregion.

Arthur Bull received the Gulf of Maine Council’s Art Longard Award in 2001. He lives in Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia. For more information on the Saltwater Network visit the Web site of the Bay of Fundy Marine Research Centre, www.bfmrc.ns.ca, or the Cobscook Bay Resource Center’s, www.cobscook.org.