Statement by

Norman H. Olsen

Governor LePage's Nominee for Commissioner of Marine Resources

Before the Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources

January 20, 2011

Senator Snowe-Mello,

Representative Weaver,

Distinguished Members of the Committee on Marine Resources,

Members of the audience,

My name is Norman Olsen, from Cherryfield and Cape Elizabeth, and I am here to discuss with you my nomination as Commissioner of Marine Resources.

It is a great honor to be nominated by Governor LePage and to be given the opportunity to appear before this committee.

I am indebted to all those members of the House and Senate with whom I have had the opportunity to meet or to chat on the telephone, yourself included, Madame Chairman, and, in particular, to Senator Langley, and Representatives Tilton and Weaver, who have been extraordinarily generous with their time in guiding me, both in this building and in our forays along the coast.

We all, I believe, share a mission to revitalize Maine's economy and enhance opportunities for the people of Maine. 

That mission is enshrined in statute, the initial paragraph of which I would like to highlight here: 

"As chief administrative officer of the Department of Marine Resources, the Commissioner has the responsibility for conserving and developing the marine and estuarine resources of the State of Maine; promoting and developing the Maine commercial fishing industry; sponsoring and conducting marine research; enforcing laws relating to marine resources and the commercial fishing industry; assisting in promoting and marketing marine resources products; and providing advice to other State agencies and the Federal Government."

I take those responsibilities seriously and as a mandate of my family's history.

For years in the United States diplomatic service, people would ask, how did a fisherman ever get into the Foreign Service?

Today, everyone is asking, how does a U.S. diplomat come to be in the fishing industry?

As some of you may know, I am the fourth generation of my family to have fished commercially in this country, I am the father of a commercial fisherman, and I am a veteran of the early years of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act.  

My great-grandfather and his older brother, both of whom emigrated from Denmark in the 19th century, lobstered, hand-lined for groundfish, and ran mackerel pounds off Cape Elizabeth.

My grandfather and father lobstered, tub trawled, ran mackerel pounds, operated both inshore and offshore trawlers, harpooned tuna, stopped herring, and caught, literally, millions of pounds of whiting.  Uncle Scup Olsen was a kingpin stopseiner for herring, landing more than 50,000 bushels in the summer of 1957. 

Uncle Bill Olsen and Cousin George Withers, like many members of my extended family, ran beam trawlers back and forth to the Grand Banks, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Nova Scotia shore, Georges and the Gulf of Maine for decades. Captain Withers is working with me to this day on a nascent effort to document for posterity those dynamic decades of our fishing industry. 

I myself began lobstering at age 12 in my own skiff with 25 traps, and by the time I graduated from Colby College in 1973 with a degree in Economics, I was running 450 traps, later with a 32-foot Jonesport boat.

Later, I was a newspaper reporter, the first executive director of the Maine Fishermen's Cooperative Association, of which my father had been a founding member years before, as well as an original member of the Portland Fish Pier Task Force, and a member of the New England Fishery Management Council.

From 1981 to 1983, the years prior to my appointment to the Foreign Service, I had the privilege of working for a vertically integrated, 1,100-employee  surf clam and ocean quahog harvesting and processing company in Maryland that, at the time, was the largest company in the U.S. clam market. 

We operated 17 ocean-going vessels from 90 to 155 feet in length, with a trucking company, two shucking plants and a final product plant, in addition to our large marketing and sales arm, with our own personnel placing product on the supermarket shelf.

That was my world for my first three decades.

Upon joining the Foreign Service, I then served, variously, in economic and political officer positions in Jamaica, Norway, Washington DC, Israel and the Gaza Strip, Geneva, doing United Nations affairs, Kosovo as chief of staff of a peacekeeping contingent, Washington DC, Moldova as deputy chief of mission, back to Tel Aviv as chief of the political section, and, finally as associate coordinator for counterterrorism at the Department of State in Washington DC.

Taken together, I believe that my years in the fishing industry, combined with my experience dealing with immensely fractious issues across the globe, form a solid basis for fulfilling the commissioner's many responsibilities.

Our once widely diversified and vertically integrated fisheries and processing sectors have deteriorated over the years, costing us critical employment in our coastal communities.    

As Governor LePage has clearly stated, we have both the opportunity and the obligation to the people of Maine to provide the regulatory and investment climate, as well as the prudent fishery resources management, that will allow us to build a truly sustainable marine resources industry across multiple species, generate value-added here in the state, and, in doing so, create significant shoreside employment for Maine's people.  

As I have stressed in each of my meetings over these past two weeks, the key word in this formulation is sustainable.  

Investors, especially processors, need to have the confidence that the value-added products they create and the markets they develop can be sustained over time, and not be subject to wide fluctuations in either raw material availability or the regulatory environment. 

Aquaculturalists need to know that their operating  environments are safe and that they will be able, years down the road, to take that first commercially viable oyster or mussel, and continue doing so.

Boatowners, whether commercial fishermen or charterboat operators, and recreational fishermen need to know that marine resources are being prudently managed to ensure longterm availability, and that any allocations that they receive can be effectively and fully utilized.

Likewise, the hard-working people of Maine deserve the opportunity for meaningful, sustained employment that will allow them to raise their families in their own communities, in the confidence that those children, too, will be able in the future to enjoy the fruits of a thriving marine resource industry.

In that effort, I pledge my utmost efforts to enhance transparency and communication with both this committee and the entire Legislature, and with all elements of our diverse marine resources community.

And let me close on this note: community.  Along with sustainable, this is another key word in our mission.

Beginning here, and in each and every meeting that I have from now on, I will be asking each of you to begin thinking of our marine resources community, and of the individual communities of people -- our neighbors -- who comprise that marine resources community.

We in the marine resources industry have always thought of everything as a zero-sum game.  One in which the extra dollar that that other fellow earns somehow comes out of our pocket.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Ours is a mutually reinforcing and bolstering groups of individual fisheries and activities that together can generate significant revenues, jobs and other opportunities.

I am confident that, working together, we can create those opportunities to enhance the lives of the people of Maine. 

Thank you.