Lubec to pioneer response plan for commercial fishing emergencies

Liz Michaud is on a quest to save lives, the lives of commercial fisherman at sea. Born and raised in Calais and Lubec, she has deep familial roots in the Downeast commercial fishing community. That connection was made even stronger on July 1, 2023, when her 18‑year‑old nephew didn't return from lobster fishing. That loss and experience, as she says, rocked her to her core and were the catalyst for her just months later to quit her career in finance and information technology and channel her grief into preventing similar tragedies from happening to other families.

To support the commercial fishing industry, Michaud pulled from her expertise in business continuity and emergency management to spearhead development of a guide "to put resources into action more quickly." Commercial fishing is second only to logging as the most dangerous profession in the U.S., and the cold waters off Maine give overboard victims a slim chance of survival, with lethal hypothermia setting in within one to three hours.

"In the early stages of an incident, you need lots of eyes and someone to direct those eyes," says Michaud, adding, "this is where the community can be a big help," while the Coast Guard and Maine Marine Patrol get in place with more sustained assets.

For instance, the search for her nephew involved agencies responsible for air, land and sea and "while the community response was amazing," she says, "there was no one to orchestrate from the community‑side," at least not initially, and "precious time was lost."

In 2025 Michaud founded Green and White Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing fisherman mortalities, and together with her "core team" published an emergency response guide in December 2025 "to enable every Maine harbor to create a detailed emergency response plan for a commercial fishing incident." Her nonprofit also received $5,000 from Maine Sea Grant to put the guide into action for two harbors and outfit each with response tool kits. Lubec will be the first harbor.

The grant will cover development of Lubec's emergency response plan and the purchase of safety equipment for a response toolkit having equipment such as flashlights, personal locator beacons and life jackets, "whatever is needed by the harbormaster."

Michaud points out that the guide is focused on community response as a "proactive tool for prevention, to complement, not replace, existing protocols from the U.S. Coast Guard or the Maine Marine Patrol."

One of the guide's authors, Annie Sokoloski, who was raised on Campobello Island and lost a great‑grandfather in a fishing accident, explains that the biggest value of the guide "is that it puts together an orchestration before an incident occurs, so everybody knows how to communicate and who to communicate with."

The guide outlines key elements of an emergency response plan, including incident coordination, scenario responses, local expertise and assets and communication protocols. Best practices before and during all incident phases and incident roles and responsibilities are also covered along with checklists and templates. 

The guide also emphasizes safety measures, including life jackets, man overboard systems and personal locator beacons to increase odds of survival. For example, wearing a life jacket is shown to more than double survival time in cold water.

To fill the need for more safety education training, Michaud has partnered with experts, including John McMillan, president of McMillan Offshore Survival Training, to provide on‑demand videos and registration for in‑person courses on the Green and White Hope website.

She also partners with the Chase Leavitt company and others to test life‑saving equipment and provide it to fishermen. For instance, she works with Fishing Partnership Support Services (FPSS) and Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety (NEC) to provide free or discounted life jackets to fishermen who attend safety training. Through a partnership with CM Marine Safety Equipment and New England Fisherman's Stewardship Association streamlined life jackets are tested, and REDDE Marine Safety Systems is testing man overboard alert systems that integrate kill‑switch technologies with satellite, VHF and radio beacon notification systems.

The emergency response guide, titled "Community Orchestration Guide: Best Practice Preparation for a Commercial Fishing Incident," was developed by a core team of six organizations: Green and White Hope, Sunrise County Economic Council, Maine Harbor Masters Association, Maine Coast Fishermen's Association, FPSS and NEC, who each brought experts to the table to research and review lessons learned and best practices from numerous entities in the rescue and recovery space, including the families of lost fishermen.

Next, she hopes to identify another harbor to build a customized plan and toolkit and to work with six to eight harbor communities to help them customize their own response plans.

By many accounts, Michaud and her partners have made extraordinary progress in the last three years, but she doesn't see it that way. "Seven people across Downeast Maine have been lost since July 2023," she says. "My measures [of success] are the number of fatalities and the number of recoveries."

In addition to Michaud and Sokoloski, the committee developing the Lubec Emergency Response Plan includes Carol Dennison, Ralph Dennison, Julie Keene, Bobby Hood, William Feltner and Jennifer Robinson. The first meeting will be on Tuesday, June 30.

A ceremony to honor lost fishermen will be held Tuesday, July 21, at the Lost Fishermen's Memorial in Lubec for the first official Maine Commercial Fishing Remembrance Day.

To download the guide and find safety education training and other information, go to greenwhitehope.org/services‑7 or email admin@greenwhitehope.org.