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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 10
June 2008
Oceans advocate Dorry new NAMA executive director
GLOUCESTER, MA – Greenpeace veteran and community activist Niaz Dorry has been named the new executive director of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA).
She takes over from Craig Pendelton, who resigned as the group’s coordinating director last December. Pendleton was with the group in 1998 when NAMA first incorporated as a nonprofit, set up its office in Saco, and devoted itself to advancing the principles of grassroots community-based fisheries management.
Coincidentally, 1998 was the same year that Time magazine honored Dorry, then 34 years old, and seven other oceans activists as “heroes for the planet.”
“I attended conversations back in the mid-90s, particularly at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum, which led to NAMA’s founding. That was part of the reason that when the opportunity came up I didn’t have to do too much soul-searching to see if NAMA was a good match,” said Dorry.
NAMA was happy with the choice as well, according to former board member, hiring committee member, and current NAMA adviser Dana Morse.
“It was pretty clear in talking to her and in hearing other people’s comments that she has a great understanding of fisheries issues. She knows what the lay of the land is. She came to the table with knowledge and ways in which NAMA could get engaged. She has a lot of ideas,” said Morse.
Dorry first joined Greenpeace in 1990, and she began her work with the group’s New England Fisheries Campaign a few years later.
She first focused her energy on toxic pollution issues, participating in several of the in-your-face protests Greenpeace is famous for. During one such protest in 1992, she organized 75 townspeople in East Liverpool, OH to scale the fence of a hazardous waste incinerator built there and was jailed for her participation.
But rabblerousing was not Dorry’s objective. First and foremost, she explained, her work was about finding answers on the townspeople’s terms.
“The toxics campaign was very much a community-based campaign. It was not about hanging a banner or blocking a ship. It was very much working with the community to find answers. If a community had a toxic mill moving in to bleach paper, I would work with them to block the project or to come up with alternatives,” she said.
Because of the success of her work on the toxics campaign, Greenpeace asked Dorry if she would begin work on an oceans campaign.
“It seemed frivolous to me at the time because people were dying and couldn’t breathe in their communities. I didn’t have time to go save whales!” she exclaimed.
But, Dorry added, “I did some research. I found the fishing world and the battles within it were about the movement of global capital and who was financed and protected. I saw parallels in the fishermen’s fight for self-determination and the idea of preserving a way of life,” she said.
Fisheries
Dorry began work on Greenpeace’s New England Fisheries Campaign in 1994 and continued until 2001, when she left to work with communities in the US and abroad as an independent consultant.
In 2005, she founded Clean Catch, which she described as an organization committed to protecting the interests of ecologically responsible fishermen, including small-scale trawlers, hook-and-line fishermen, and pot fishermen in Gloucester, MA, the group’s home base, and around the world.
In 2004, when the Indian Ocean earthquake triggered one of the deadliest natural disasters in history, Clean Catch and NAMA joined hands.
“We began working directly with NAMA to get funding for those fishermen, many of whom I knew at the time. NAMA became the fiscal sponsor of Clean Catch, but the tsunami hit and we weren’t able to do the work that Clean Catch was founded to do,” she said.
At the close of their tsunami relief fund-raising efforts, the groups had raised a total of $151,593.90.
For the last two years, Dorry has been working with the Healthy Building Network. The network advocates for environmental health and justice and has been active in building homes for the working poor in the Gulf of Mexico region following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Funding
Now, in joining with NAMA again, Dorry said she is looking forward to getting back into working with fisheries issues directly. And she believes she has met her perfect match.
“I’m doing this work because it is really what I feel I’m supposed to do with my life,” she said.
In the past, NAMA has run on an operating budget of $250,000 to $300,000 with additional funds for special interest projects. For example, in 2005 the Fleet Visioning Project drew its own $300,000 in grant funding.
NAMA’s funding ran out earlier this year, and the Saco office is now closed, but the board did some work to raise some money to support the organization through June. It will be up to Dorry to raise NAMA’s operating budget for the future.
“I’m very encouraged by the reaction we’ve gotten to our new plans from potential funders. I’m hopeful and relatively confident that we’ll be able to raise our projected budget for the rest of 2008 as well as start raising the funds we need to operate in 2009 and beyond,” she said.
Morse added that NAMA is in a strategic planning phase right now, taking stock of where it is and how to get the organization back on firm footing.
“It’s a big change,” he said. “We need to expand the funding avenues.”
Community alliances
Once those initial steps have been taken, Dorry’s goal is to build momentum based on the group’s past efforts.
“I’m impressed at the material that NAMA has produced over the last 10 years. We need to take that information and implement it. The priority in my mind is to build community alliances first. Then it will be the right time for NAMA to build a movement,” she said.
In particular, Dorry suggested aligning with the Penobscot East Resource Center, which shared some of NAMA’s objectives through the Area Management Coalition.
She also mentioned the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association.
“They provide a good model of how we can fish within the constraints of the current management system. We’ll focus on how we can strengthen the community sustained fishing models that started in Port Clyde to go beyond Port Clyde,” she said.
New members
Right now, NAMA is searching for additional members to both strengthen and expand its current board of directors.
“The need for NAMA is as critical today and our principles as strong as they were 10 years ago,” said Curt Rice, the new board chair. “We have a very solid foundation to build our future upon, and our board is looking forward to working with Niaz to design and implement our new plans. She is a gem.”
Two new staff members have recently come on board.
One is Boyce Thorne-Miller, a marine biologist who Dorry described as being on the leading edge of science-based, ecosystem-based management who has worked with fishing communities in the US, Japan, and Canada.
The other is Andrianna Natsoulas, who has extensive experience working with fishing communities. She also has fishery management experience ranging from international to local councils.
Jennifer Plummer, a NAMA staffer who in the past has focused on outreach work for the organization, continues to work on community sustained fisheries projects.
Right now, all staffers are working out of home offices.
“With technology today, it’s actually working out really well,” Dorry said. “We have less overhead and more time to do the work rather than commute to work.”
Core values
During this year of regrouping and building at NAMA, Dorry emphasized that the alliance’s guiding principals and core values will not change.
As an environmentalist with a community activist background, Dorry might seem sharply different from NAMA’s former director, a commercial fisherman, although many of the two leaders’ ideas align.
“There were a couple of milestones along the way that made me feel good about NAMA’s work,” said Dorry, naming NAMA’s decision in the mid-1990s to focus on community-based management as an example.
She also referenced the controversial groundfish Framework 33 lawsuit filed by environmental organizations in 2000. That case ultimately led to a negotiated settlement in May 2002 that went against the National Marine Fisheries Service.
NAMA intervened on the side of the environmental groups, risking criticism from other commercial fishing associations, because it wanted fishermen to be a part of the solution and believed that groundfish stocks were depleted and needed to be rebuilt.
“It was a brave move,” Dorry recalled. “I called Craig and said ‘Good for you! You said what no one else was willing to say.’ That is reflective in other work that NAMA has produced over the years.”
Amplify the call
In the future, Dorry hopes to amplify NAMA’s bravo and continue to be a loudspeaker on fisheries issues.
“Once I got it, it never left me that community-based fisheries are the solution to the long-term health of the oceans. I believe that today as strongly as I did 14 years ago as an environmental activist,” she said. “When people grow up with something, it adds a level of stewardship that just making money off of something doesn’t.”
And, of course, Dorry concluded, her number one priority is to work herself out of a job.
Lauren Simmons
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