Downeast Fisheries Partnership
Sustainable Fisheries and Resilient CommunitiesOn a mission to restore and sustain Downeast fisheries to help our natural and human communities thrive.
About Our Partnership
The Downeast Fisheries Partnership came together in 2014 to improve the health of our communities by rejuvenating the region’s once-thriving fisheries economy. Our unique composition is our strength. We are nonprofit partners with strong expertise and extensive experience working with, and to support and restore fish, fishermen, fisheries, food systems, and community economics.
The Power of Collective Action
Our collective action partnership works with supportive funders, like-minded nonprofits, fishermen, local municipalities, and state and national fisheries managers to restore a resilient foundation for a thriving fisheries economy across Maine’s Washington and Hancock counties.
Our Partners
Built on the power of collective action, the Downeast Fisheries Partnership possesses strong regional capabilities in land conservation, municipal leadership, outreach and education, economic and community development, stakeholder engagement, and fisheries restoration and management.
DFP Partner Organizations
Click on any logo above to learn more and support the work of our partner organizations.
Priorities
There will be a day in Downeast Maine when the Gulf of Maine is silver with fish; when alewife, shad, and salmon race up the rivers flashing in the sun; when the nets of fishermen once again teem with cod and haddock; when coastal villages bustle with new energy and new possibilities; and when we, the communities of Downeast Maine, are the stewards of our future. The Downeast Fisheries Partnership is committed to this future.
Watersheds
We have decided to deliberately focus and strategically organize our partnership’s efforts within three strategically chosen watersheds in Downeast Maine (St. Croix/Skutik River to Cobscook & Passamaquoddy Bay, Machias Valley to Machias Bay, Union River to Acadia). By focusing our work in this way, we believe that our partnership’s work can more quickly rebuild these key watersheds as fully functional systems that support thriving fishery populations and fishing dependent communities once again.
Habitat Connectivity
Alewives have a traditional cultural and economic importance to the communities of Downeast Maine. However, beginning in the late 1600s mill dams were built across Maine’s rivers and streams, blocking the alewives’ annual upstream spawning run. In recent years, the removal of migration obstacles from Maine’s rivers has shown that these resilient, short-lived, fast-growing fish can achieve dramatic recoveries in only a few years. Bringing back alewife and other sea-run fishes will revitalize culturally important, community-scale fisheries, and will also support the restoration of our coastal groundfish fisheries and the endangered Atlantic salmon.
Communities
Downeast’s coastal communities rank among the most fisheries dependent communities in the nation. But after more than a century of dam building, roadway construction, climate change and chronic over harvesting, our coastal and sea-run fisheries are depleted – leaving many coastal communities precariously dependent upon a lobster population that is showing signs of stress thought to be related to environmental changes.
Collaborative initiatives that benefit from continuous and long-term support
Partnership Operations
Current operations:
- DFP Coordinator
- DFP Project Development Specialist
- Partner organizations’ participation in monthly planning and decision making meetings related to DFP work
Collaborative Positions
Currently, partners utilize a shared position model, where multiple member organizations share a position to enhance capacity for a common goal. Through these shared positions we hope to engage with coastal communities and provide support for resilience initiatives and efforts in the Downeast region.
Current collaborative positions:
Sea-Run Fisheries Monitoring Coordinator, a collaborative position for the GOM River Herring Network
Convenings
Since DFP’s founding in 2013, DFP has initiated conversations about fisheries with a broad range of community partners and interested individuals. Our strength and capacity lie within our partner organizations and our ability to work in collaboration. Our convenings bring together key community partners to work towards inclusive, regional and co-management approaches. This approach is important to effectively manage valuable fisheries resources, especially during a time of climate threats, coastal vulnerability and unprecedented change.
Previous Covenings:
We are in the process of developing and coordinating a 2025 DFP convening.
Collaborative Education and Outreach Initiatives and Projects
Our work to restore Downeast rivers, fish populations, and sustainable fisheries is ultimately motivated by a desire to help our communities thrive in the face of challenges through a series of projects and programs.
Current initiatives and projects:
- Reconnecting Downeast Maine’s Watersheds and Communities is our current collaborative watershed education project funded through NOAA’s BWET program from 2023-2025.
- Building Capacity and Climate Resilience for Underserved Communities in Downeast Maine is our current collaborative initiative to address climate challenges and expand our partnership work to address holistic, collaborative climate resilience planning in our coastal communities and at a watershed scale to enhance resilience of our fisheries-dependent coastal communities.
Downeast Maine By the Numbers
Five out of eight of the nation's rivers where naturally spawning Atlantic salmon return are in Downeast Maine.
37 million adult alewives could return from the Gulf of Maine to spawn in the St. Croix River watershed if their upstream access were fully restored
Downeast Maine is the most fisheries dependent region in New England and ranks as one of the most fishing intensive economies in the nation.
Added together, Downeast Maine’s seven largest rivers, flow for 412 miles to the Gulf of Maine.
Building Relationships
We have a strong history of working across the region to build trust and cultivate relationships of mutual respect among our communities, businesses, commercial harvesters, and management agencies to strengthen and protect our region’s natural resource economy and cultural heritage.
Contact us to learn more.
Contact Us
Contact Downeast Fisheries Partnership
207-255-0983