A facilitated process to establish the Alliance for Maine’s Marine Economy (AMME)
Principal Investigator: Paul Anderson (Sea Grant)
Partners: Heather Leslie (Darling Marine Center); Brian Beal (UMM)
Abstract: The intent of this proposal is to support the formation of the Alliance for Maine’s Marine Economy (Alliance) in order to grow and sustain Maine’s marine economy. The Alliance is an outgrowth of a successful process initiated during 2015 that enabled us to develop a $7 million proposal for infrastructure relating to marine jobs in Maine. The goal of this nascent Alliance is to catalyze targeted infrastructure, industry-driven research and development, and workforce development investments that facilitate business development, accelerate product innovation, assess and prevent risks to resource health, and forecast changes in product supply. Each investment has been identified as a pressing need by industry; this approach will continue and thus is directly in line with the intent of the RRF. The Alliance leverages capacity at multiple University of Maine System (UMS) campuses (particularly UM and UMM), and will deepen the impacts on Maine’s marine economy and coastal communities of UMS signature initiatives in Marine Sciences and Marine Biology from Casco Bay to Eastport.