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DMR Home > Species Info > Groundfish > Permit Bank

Maine Groundfish Permit Bank

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Background

A Memorandum of Agreement between NOAA and the Maine DMR was signed August 2010 that established a pilot multispecies permit bank program. NOAA is providing funding to the State of Maine, in the form of a Federal grant award to DMR, for the express purpose of establishing a bank of Northeast multispecies fishing vessel permits. The Federal grant award is intended to facilitate a partnership between the ME DMR and NMFS for the establishment of a pilot permit bank program to inform the potential expansion of permit banking programs to other states and regions. ME DMR and NMFS intend for this Permit Bank to achieve the following objectives:

  • To secure continued access to fishery resources for local, small-scale fishermen from small fishing communities throughout Maine;
  • To create and protect sustainable local fisheries;
  • To supplement existing access rights held by fishermen in small Maine communities; and
  • To mitigate the effects of fishing effort consolidation on small-scale fishermen and rural fishing communities in Maine.

More details about the permit bank are available below, or by contacting DMR's Trisha De Graaf.

Auction

DMR, through its Maine Permit Bank Program (MPBP), auctioned allocations of its annual catch entitlement (ACE) for 14 fish stocks for the 2011 fishing year to qualified applicants who submitted the highest bids through a live auction process. This ACE distribution mechanism was a pilot program used to inform DMR of how best to distribute MPBP ACE in the future. As such, this process was applicable to allocations made for the 2011 fishing year only.

The ACE auction took place at the Portland Fish Exchange (PFE) on May 19, 2011. The auction was performed and overseen by Bert Jongerden, General Manager of the Portland Fish Exchange.

More details about the auction are available below, or by contacting DMR's Trisha De Graaf.