An Institutional Analysis of Maine's Shellfish Co-Management System

The soft-shell clam industry is the second most valuable commercial fishery in Maine. The fishery is co-managed between the local municipalities and the state government. Each municipality is responsible for establishing conservation and access rules to manage their shellfish resource as it extends to the lower tide line, while the state is responsible for monitoring and closing areas to ensure shellfish are safe for human consumption. Although each town must meet specific criteria in order to establish a shellfish ordinance, there is significant variation in the way towns manage their resource. Sixty-one towns have approved ordinances to manage their shellfish resource, while thirty-eight towns with a resource do not have such an ordinance. In order to assess the efficacy of this co-management system, we observed local shellfish management meetings, reviewed town ordinances and meeting minutes, and interviewed local and state shellfish management stakeholders. All data were entered into an NVivo database for qualitative analysis and findings were summarized into Excel and presented spatially using ArcGIS. We report on the major themes that emerged related to the structure and function of this management system and theorize on the attributes of the system that explain the variation observed.