Prodigal groundfish permit comes back to the Island

More than a decade ago, Greg Mayhew was set to retire as a commercial fisherman and decommission his 75-foot dragger Unicorn, a staple on Dutcher Dock in Chilmark. But the loss of him and his vessel from the Menemsha docks would mean the loss of the Island’s last federal groundfish permit, and there was no Island buyer to take his place.

Rather than sell to an off-Island fisherman or corporation and lose the quota forever, Mayhew sold his permit in 2015 to the Nature Conservancy, which partnered with the then-nascent Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust (MVFPT) to act as a steward of the permit and retain the lucrative license to eventually be accessible to future Island fishermen.

“It was clear that I wouldn’t be able to keep fishing, partly because of regulations and partly because I’m getting older,” Mayhew said in a telephone conversation with The Times back in 2015. “I didn’t want to see the permit go to a conglomerate that already had 25. I want to see fishing continue in Menemsha, so it’s not just a place you go to see sailboats, but somewhere you can get fresh fish and not truck it in from somewhere else, not knowing what you’re getting.”

And that’s exactly what’s happened. Greg Mayhew has since passed away, but more than a decade later, his federal groundfish permit, appraised at around $75,000, is back in the hands of an Island fisherman, specifically his nephew, Matt Mayhew, who targets squid and fluke on the Lady M out of Menemsha.

The conservancy announced in a press release Tuesday that it had transferred the permit to the trust, which has a permit bank to lease quotas or the right to catch fish or shellfish to local fishermen. Shelley Edmundson, executive director of the MVFPT, said the conservancy sold the permit for a dollar.

A decade ago, there was no fisherman with a vessel set up to harvest the groundfish fishery, which became less profitable as stocks declined. Now, the younger Mayhew’s boat, which has an otter trawl, is the only one on the Island that can utilize the permit; the Martha Rose, a 77-foot sea scalloper owned by Wes Brighton, already has a federal groundfish permit. This license allows for Mayhew to fish in federal waters for species like cod, haddock, and flounder.

The trust owns and manages the permit, and while used by Mayhew now, it can stay on the Island indefinitely through the trust’s permit bank and be recycled out to future fishermen. Mayhew will pay an annual fee to utilize the permit, Edmundson said, and the funds generated by the fee will be used to support the trust’s conservation and research initiatives and partnerships.

“It’s been a long process, but is worth the wait,” Edmundson said. She added that the “right thing is happening,” because not only is the permit back in Island waters but within the same family.

Chris McGuire, ocean program director for Massachusetts and the Northeast at the conservancy, called this stewardship a “long-term community benefit” as the permit can be shared by many people over the years.

He added that the groundfish fishery is a limited-access fishery, which means federal regulators decided in the ’90s that they wouldn’t issue any more permits in order to rebuild the fish stocks. That means any new anglers to the fishery need to get the permit from someone else. McGuire said sellers used to hand them down to their kids or someone who worked on their boat, but that doesn’t happen as much anymore as the industry becomes harder to enter and sustain. And the permits don’t come up for sale that often.

“This is a forward-looking move,” McGuire told The Times back in 2015 of the permit acquisition. That intent has come back around, McGuire said Tuesday.