Our History

NAMA was born in 1995 because, at the time, there was a critical mass of people in New England who believed there had to be a better approach to protect our oceans and manage marine resources.

A small group of fishermen and fishing community advocates began exploring an alternative management structure — the decentralized governance model that transformed BankAmericard from a failing franchise in the 1960's into VISA, the world's most successful financial services company. The brain behind this incredible success is Mr. Dee Hock, VISA's founder and CEO Emeritus.

In 1998, NAMA incorporated as an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to pursuing community based management to achieve its purpose of restoring and enhancing an enduring marine system supporting a healthy diversity and an abundance of marine life and human uses through a self-organizing and self-governing organization.

With Captain Craig Pendleton at the helm and the help of the founding fathers and mothers such as Peter Schelley and Jennifer Atkinson of Conservation Law Foundation, Mark Simonitch (commercial fisherman), Rollie Barnaby of University of New Hampshire and many other advisors and partipants, NAMA set out on a decade-long pursuit of collaborative research and visioning toward realizing community and ecosystem based management.

From the start, NAMA has supported diversity in its participants, increased accountability and values-based decision-making. We advocate for an organizational structure that allows one voice to emerge from many, and a process that calls for managing the resource on a more localized level, much as a school board makes decisions for one community and not the entire eastern seaboard.

Today, NAMA is working to achieve our purpose with a new team, a dedicated board of trustees and collaborative programs aimed at building a broad base of support for the social transition we seek.

We invite you to join us.

As always, we invite your perspective, input and participation as we continue in our mission to restore and enhance an enduring Northwest Atlantic marine system.