After serving as Maine’s top fisheries regulator for 13 years, Patrick Keliher has decided to retire, according to the governor’s office.
Keliher’s last day as commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources is expected to be in mid-March, officials said.
Since 2011, Keliher, a Gardiner native, has overseen regulation of the state’s iconic lobster industry as well as dozens of other marine fisheries that fuel Maine’s estimated $3 billion seafood business.
During his tenure, the cumulative annual dockside value of all commercially harvested marine species in Maine rose from $425 million in 2011 to more than $890 million a decade later, largely due fluctuations in the price of lobster. In 2023, the most recent year with available totals, the cumulative dockside value of all Maine fisheries was $611 million.
Also during that time, the state agency saw the value of Maine’s once-sleepy baby eel fishery skyrocket; the scallop fishery rebound after catches cratered the prior decade; and the lobster industry weather huge swings in value and challenges from federal regulations aimed at protecting whales.
Gov. Janet Mills’ office announced Keliher’s retirement Tuesday afternoon.
“Under his leadership, he tackled many significant challenges to Maine’s commercial fisheries and marine industries, while leading an agency that served its many communities and constituencies with honesty and respect,” Mills said. “Maine’s commercial fisheries and seafood industries, our marine environment, our working waterfronts, and our coastal communities are better today because of Pat’s relentless advocacy for Maine.”
Mills will name an acting commissioner for the department before Keliher’s departure, if a permanent commissioner is not yet nominated by then, officials said. Whoever Mills nominates for the post will be subject to a hearing before the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee and confirmation by the state Senate.
Keliher, who is 58, has been with the marine department since 2007, when the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission was absorbed into the state agency to become its bureau of sea-run fisheries and habitat. Keliher was executive director of the commission and then, with the restructuring, became director of the bureau under then-Gov. John Baldacci.
Keliher then became acting commissioner of the department in the summer of 2011 after the abrupt resignation of Norman Olsen from the role, and in early 2012, then-Gov. Paul LePage officially picked him to succeed Olsen as commissioner.
In an interview about his retirement, Keliher said that because he had been working for the Department of Marine Resources for a few years before he rose through the ranks to become commissioner, he thought he knew what to expect. But the raft of urgent issues Keliher faced during his first year on the job quickly disproved his assumption.
Poaching of baby eels, also known as elvers, exploded in that fishery as prices soared. A brand new regulatory management scheme had to be developed and implemented for scallops, which had been severely depleted in the 2000s. And a steep drop in the price of lobster prompted public warnings from Keliher against any plans to organize a work stoppage in that fishery, which would have violated federal anti-trust laws.
“I think I did get an ulcer that year,” he said. “It was brutal.”
More recently, Keliher hit another publicized rough spot, but this time the focus was not on a fishery management crisis. It was on a recorded video of him saying “f—- you” to a man who called him a “sell-out” at a meeting last month over a now-discarded state plan to raise the minimum size catch limit for lobster.
Keliher, who apologized to the crowd shortly after making the remark, said the scrutiny he got for the exchange did not factor into his decision to retire. He said he already had decided to leave the department before a new governor is elected next year, and that over the Christmas holiday, he and his wife decided sooner was better than later.
Robin Alden of Stonington, who led the department from early 1995 through 1997, said that getting criticized comes with the job and that Maine fishermen aren’t shy about being profane. It is not unusual for tempers to flare at meetings about measures that can have significant impacts on fishing livelihoods, she said.
“You get yelled at a lot, and that’s hard on a person,” Alden said. “So many people think you’re just Satan. That doesn’t go away.”
Despite the incident, Alden credited Keliher with being a skilled communicator. Showing up in fishing communities to speak with fishermen on their terms, and then going to Washington, D.C., for detailed conversations with members of Congress about proposed legislation is not an easy balance to strike.
“The job is really complex. You’ve got very local politics in Maine,” Alden said. “He’s got a really good ear for what’s going on on the ground. All politics is local and all ecology is local, so grassroots politics is really important to the job.”
Harpswell fisherman Terry Alexander, who served on the New England Fisheries Management Council for more than nine years, always appreciated getting advice from Keliher.
“I’m human so sometimes I would listen and sometimes I wouldn’t, but I could always count on him for good solid fisheries management advice,” Alexander said. “Even to this day I look to him to advise me and still will even after he retires whether he likes it or not.”
Keliher said Maine’s fisheries currently are stable, which is one reason why he’s retiring now, but that there are always challenges on the horizon.
Possible tariffs with Canada, where the lobster industry in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is closely tied with Maine’s fishery, could have “devastating” consequences by sharply reducing prices paid to local fishermen and increasing prices for consumers, he said.
Worsening storms driven by climate change — which caused severe damage to working waterfront properties along the entire coast last winter — also pose a long-term threat to Maine fisheries, which require such infrastructure to function. Continued investment in preserving waterfront access and making these properties more resistant to storm damage is key to preserving Maine’s seafood industry, he said.
And the biggest issue the lobster industry has been facing for decades — the impact of fishing gear on critically endangered right whales — remains a concern, he said.
Keliher said the “pinnacle” of his career as commissioner was helping to convince Congress in 2022 to adopt a six-year delay in implementing new rules for protecting whales. The pause is aimed at giving the Maine fishery what it and state officials have been seeking for years, which is better scientific data that clearly show whether Maine fishing gear has a direct impact on whales.
Maine fishermen have long argued that federal regulators need to take such data into account when imposing gear restrictions on the fishery, instead of imposing harsh limits based on presumed risks that may turn out to be ineffective. Maine officials have stuck by this argument — which was buoyed by a 2023 federal appeals court decision in their favor — even though, for the first time ever, the death of a right whale last year in Massachusetts has been directly linked to entanglement with Maine fishing gear.
Patrice McCarron, executive director of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said Keliher’s willingness to listen to fishermen was evident in the department’s decision to back the group’s court challenge to federal whale regulations.
“Our collaboration also helped secure a significant law in Congress that protected Maine’s lobster industry from being shut down by federal whale rules,” McCarron said.” The MLA is grateful for the Commissioner’s dedication to ensuring a future for Maine lobstermen today and in the future.”
One strategy that the state has supported is temporarily moving gear out of areas when whales are detected there, as happened last month when approximately 90 right whales were spotted just west of Jeffrey’s Ledge in the Gulf of Maine. That grouping represented one quarter of the entire North Atlantic right whale population of roughly 370 individual whales.
At the time, Keliher strongly urged Maine fishermen to remove gear or reduce the amount of vertical rope in the area.
“Let me be clear, this is not mandatory, this would be a voluntary action on your part,” he said on Jan. 24. “However, failure of the industry to self-regulate your activity could be costly in the long run.”
This week, Keliher said that fishermen know what is at stake, and the response to his alert last month shows that they are willing to take reasonable measures to protect whales.
“Not everyone cooperated,” he said of fishermen who had gear near where the whales were seen. “But the vast majority of them did.”
Keliher said that even with voluntary alternate measures, the delay in new federal rules or possible changes to the law that would give regulators and fishermen more flexibility in how to better protect whales, there undoubtedly will continue to be legal efforts to sharply reduce the amount of suspended rope in areas where whales congregate.
“People should not be overly confident that those will go away,” he said.
