The Port Orford Ocean Resource Team was established in 2001 to develop a sustainable, local fishery based in a small community on the coast of Oregon. POORT supports community and ecosystem-based management.
POORT has no legal management authority, but has established formal partnerships with a state agency and the city of Port Orford. An inclusive organizational structure and shared sense of the problems facing the ecosystem have aided POORT in realizing significant support among local fishermen.
A Community Stewardship Area that promotes voluntary actions to improve the fishery was established in 2006. It includes traditional fishing grounds as well as terrestrial areas. Then in 2009, POORT’s work led to the state declaring a portion of the stewardship area as a marine reserve that is off-limits to fishing.
POORT has allowed fishermen to sell their catch to new markets, building direct connections between fishermen and consumers. It has raised awareness of the ecosystem and its stressors and it partnered with researchers to build new knowledge of habitats and species.
Mission
The mission of the Port Orford Ocean Resource Team is to engage Port Orford fishermen and other community members in developing and implementing a strategic plan and framework that ensures the long-term sustainability of the Port Orford reef ecosystem and the social system that depends on it.
Objectives
POORT has developed objectives that include the following:
Lead Organizations
Key Parties
The following non-governmental organizations, foundations and consulting groups provided the Port Orford Ocean Resource Team with technical assistance or funding for strategic planning and ecological monitoring, among other services:
The Port Orford Ocean Resource Team, or POORT, is an umbrella non-governmental organization that formalized and strengthened community- and ecosystem-based management in Port Orford, Ore.
Board of Directors
A Board of Directors includes five commercial fishermen and meets monthly. It is also called the Fishermen’s Board, and is the primary decision-making body.
Community Advisory Board
A Community Advisory Board includes community leaders, scientists, recreational users, and representatives of stakeholder groups and the mayor of Port Orford. It also includes the chairman of the Port Orford Planning Commission, the editor of the local newspaper, and the Ocean Ecosystem Project Manager for the Surfrider Foundation.
Administrative
Leesa Cobb, one of the founders of POORT, is the executive director. The staff is composed of an administrative assistant and AmeriCorps volunteer who serves as the Stewardship Area Outreach Coordinator.
Laura Anderson, then a graduate student at Oregon State University, and Leesa Cobb, the wife of a fisherman, began soliciting input on fisheries management from fishermen in Port Orford, Ore. in the late 1990s.
Coast-wide, top-down management was not working for the locally-based fisheries in Port Orford. The two formed the Port Orford Ocean Resource Team to promote finer-scale, science-based management to create a sustainable fishery. POORT, as the organization is called, officially formed in 2001.
About 25 percent of Port Orford’s 1,200 residents are directly employed in the fishing industry. Individual and household poverty rates are much greater than the national average.
In the late 1990s, a coast-wide salmon disaster was declared. Port Orford’s local sea urchin fishery collapsed. Stocks of imported groundfish species followed suit. State and federal attempts at managing the local fishing fleet were failing. By 2003, many groundfish fisheries had closed to allow overfished species to recover.
The Ecosystem
The ocean environment within the Stewardship Area at Port Orford on the coast of Oregon contains sandy bottom, bedrock and high-relief rocky reefs.
The nearshore area contains a number of dynamic reef systems, most with emergent rocks that support a variety of marine mammals and bird populations, including the threatened Stellar sea lion. Major reef systems include Blanco Reef, Orford Reef, McKenzie’s Reef, Redfish Rocks and Island Rock.
All commercial fishing vessels in Port Orford are less than 40 feet long. They use longline or hook and line gear and pots for crab fishing. More than 70 percent of Port Orford’s fishing vessels depend on the groundfish fishery, and primarily fish for black cod and several species of rockfish.
Threats
Port Orford’s rural location and the conservation measures, both voluntary and regulatory, that were put in place following the collapse of the groundfish fishery in 2003 have limited stressors on the ecosystem. However, participants in the POORT effort have identified the following threats:
The Port Orford Ocean Resource Team uses the following major strategies to accomplish its conservation objectives:
Protected Areas
POORT has established the following protected areas:
Strategic Partnerships
POORT has used partnerships to learn from the experiences of other groups that have conducted community-based management. Participating in workshops around the country has allowed POORT to meet other groups, such as the Maine-based Stonington Fisheries Alliance. POORT based its own fundamental and operating principles for its Stewardship Area on guidelines from the alliance.
Other learning experiences have come through POORT’s partnership with five other community- and ecosystem-based management initiatives on the West Coast. The David and Lucille Packard Foundation funded the West Coast Ecosystem-Based Management Network. The network’s annual meeting in 2009 was held in Port Orford. Participants shared the challenges and successes of their projects.
Formal Agreements
POORT has struck partnerships with a state agency and the city of Port Orford that have been solidified by the following formal memorandum of understanding:
Stormwater Management
Voters passed a stormwater ordinance in November 2009. The ordinance will improve water quality in freshwater streams and near-shore areas within the city limits. The MOU stipulated that POORT would provide $6,000 and the city would provide $3,000 to hire consultants and pay city staff to draft the ordinance. POORT also provided 170 hours of research and conducted extensive outreach.
Voluntary Release of Spawning Fish
POORT motivated fishermen to release spawning female fish. POORT board members began releasing the fish and believed they survived. State fisheries managers declined to support the release program, citing a lack of scientific evidence to support the claim that the fish survived. Board members wanted fishermen to participate, however. They convinced the major local fish buyers to stop purchasing spawning fish. POORT distributed posters about the need to release these fecund females back into the ocean.
The Port Orford Ocean Resource Team relies on a variety of partnerships to monitor ecological conditions within the Community Stewardship Area. Collaborative research helps facilitate information sharing and understanding between Port Orford's fishermen and scientists. The research is translated into management decision-making. Fishermen assist with data collection and often charter services to scientists.
Two projects include the tagging of key species in the live fish fishery to examine fish survival rates and movements. POORT, local fishermen and state officials are collaborating on a project to collect biological data on near-shore species. The goal is to conduct stock assessments on a finer spatial scale.
Other projects include a multi-beam bathymetric survey with state officials and Oregon State University. The survey will be used to develop habitat maps of the marine reserve. The state is conducting a video survey in the area to improve understanding of fish behavior and life cycles.
In 2008, POORT joined the Nature Conservancy in a study of algal communities, seaweed and the animals that rely on them. The study identified 60 species, 12 of which had never been recorded in Oregon. One actually may be new to science.
The Port Orford Ocean Resource Team on the coast of Oregon has achieved the following accomplishments or impacts:
Raising Awareness
POORT has raised awareness of marine issues in the city of Port Orford. Its founders also have shared their experiences with other groups across the country, helping provide the motivation for others seeking to pursue similar projects.
Support Fishermen and Community Members
POORT has supported fishermen and community members, helping to cushion the blow from the salmon disaster and closure of certain fisheries. POORT helped distribute funds from the Oregon salmon commission and helped fishermen with rent payments and emergency medical support. POORT regularly donates to the Port Orford food bank, an essential safety-net in a community with high unemployment.
Connecting Fishermen and Consumers
POORT has built direct connections between fishermen and consumers. POORT's commitment to economic sustainability has helped provide fishermen with new outlets for selling fish. Some fishermen are selling their fish directly to consumers at food cooperatives in larger cities. POORT also sells fish out of its office in downtown Port Orford. Previously, local fish were not available to local consumers unless they were connected to the fishing industry. Port Orford residents receive a substantial discount on purchases from POORT.
The Port Orford Ocean Resource Team has been facilitated by the following factors:
The Port Orford Ocean Resource Team has encountered the following challenges to realizing its conservation goals:
People involved with the Poort Orford Ocean Resource Team have learned the following lessons:
The Port Orford Ocean Resource Team: http://www.oceanresourceteam.org/home