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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 10
June 2006
Penobscot East Resource Center hires community coordinator
STONINGTON, ME - Penobscot East Resource Center (PERC), a Stonington-based nonprofit organization, has taken another step in its mission to enable a future for fishing communities from the Penobscot Bay islands to Jonesport.
It created the position of community coordinator and, in May, announced the hiring of Bob Rosenbaum to fill the role.
As community coordinator, Rosenbaum will build connections between local groups working to responsibly manage marine resources, and help those groups operate and organize effectively.
He comes to the new job with a broad fisheries background, including working as a commercial fisherman in New York and as a contractor for a Massachusetts seafood company.
“Fishermen need to be involved in governing their fisheries,” Rosenbaum said at his May 15 start. “If you’re involved, you can help in making the right decisions.”
His fishing experience, which includes gillnetting, dragging, pound netting, clamming and lobstering, has occurred in periods of resource abundance and decline. He was lobstering in Long Island Sound in 1999, when the huge lobster die-off took place there.
“I consider myself a bayman,” said Rosenbaum, who was forced by financial pressure to move away from Long Island in the wake of the lobster fishery collapse.
His experiences as a New York bayman have shown Rosenbaum the necessity of caring for marine resources and the working waterfront.
“If you’re not involved in the process then it rolls right over you,” he said. “You need to be a steward of your livelihood.”
The community coordinator’s job is to help people in the fishing industry to be involved for their future, said Robin Alden, PERC executive director.
“There are groups and leaders with the energy and understanding to make a future,” Alden said. “But they are mostly volunteers and they just don’t have the time for all of the leg work. Bob can do that for them.”
Rosenbaum will also play a large part in PERC’s Zone C Lobster Hatchery, located on the Stonington waterfront.
“Bob will help Penobscot East move the community-built lobster hatchery into a community-operated hatchery,” said Robin Alden, PERC executive director.
The hatchery is expected to become operational this summer. Eggs, which will be obtained from female lobsters caught in the traps of local fishermen, will be raised in the hatchery to juvenile size. The young lobsters will then be released into the wild at sites determined by the Zone’s fishermen.
The community coordinator position is funded for the next two years by a grant from the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust, which funds projects in New England in the areas of health, education, and the environment.
In addition to Alden and Rosenbaum, PERC staff includes Bobbi-Ann Billings, assistant administrator: Isaac Kestenbaum, public affairs; and Kristin Wilson, who handles research project work on a part-time basis.
Ted Ames, who is vice-chair of the PERC board of directors, manages the lobster hatchery, which also recently hired two full-time seasonal employees.
For more information, contact PERC at (207) 367-2708.
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