Acadia Partners Blog

In late October SERC was privileged to host a meeting of researchers associated with the Downeast Initiative. You can read the article describing that meeting by clicking here. I attended the meeting and came away impressed. What the Downeast Initiative is attempting to do is critically important.

This importance extends beyond fishing. Fisheries are among this region’s most significant natural resources, viewed from an economic standpoint. I cannot conceive of a way in which we could have an effective Downeast natural resource conservation ethic if we do not have a fisheries conservation ethic.

John Muir wrote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” That is the thinking behind ecosystem-based fisheries management — an approach to fisheries management that we treat as something new — as something that we need to figure out how to do.

Seventy years ago the Dust Bowl brought about the first major effort to create ecosystem-based management. It was an effort that involved government programs, education, management and monitoring, and various economic incentives.

What did we learn from that? What worked? What are the outcomes seventy years down the road? What came as a surprise? And what can we apply from all this learning to our current need to bring an ecosystem approach to managing fisheries?

Every once in a while my ties to the world of high tech swing me around so that I can see something new about our local economy. An article in last week’s Financial Times, coupled with some conversations with friends who follow the changing landscape of technology business, got me to thinking about how we do business and solve problems here on the downeast coast.

Something known as “Web 2.0″ is emerging in the world of Internet business. It is a new way of building products, financing a business, and working together. It is a big enough deal to make Microsoft worry about its future. Meanwhile, a lot of us here back home are still trying to get something better than dial-up when we want to get our email. But, all the same, there are some things about Web 2.0 that are worthwhile for us to pay attention to.

As we work to grow Acadia Partners and to support SERC, we are continually learning new things. We are meeting new groups, reading new research, and making new connections.
This WebLog — or “Blog,” to use the more familiar term — is a place for us to capture and share these discoveries and insights. Sometimes […]