REST IN PEACE, NILS STOLPE, FISHERIES GURU BY JIM LOVGREN
Guru; a person who enlightens others with his teaching and knowledge. Early Friday morning, May 16 th , the commercial fishing industry lost one of its most respected voices as Nils Stolpe, 79, passed away in his sleep. Nils had been hospitalized Thursday morning after falling in his home and breaking his ankle. He also bumped his head, and his blood pressure was low, so he was held overnight for observation, he never woke up. He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Pat, his son Nils, and his wife Janet.
Nils was born on December 16 th , 1945 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and graduated from Hammonton HS in New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University where he studied marine biology and earned his master’s degree in environmental planning. He spent 10 years as a project manager on a small-scale aquaculture project on the Delaware river, before he moved on to work at the New Jersey Department of Agriculture where he spent the next 9 years attempting to come up with an aquaculture development plan. He gradually recognized that large scale aquaculture in New Jersey was not feasible due to the overall costs involved, including high labor, taxes, real estate, and construction. When his boss insisted on continuing pursuing aquaculture development, Nils moved on.
He became an independent fisheries consultant, working for the New Jersey Commercial Fisherman’s Association, and as communications director for the Fisheries Research Institute. He helped form the Garden State Seafood Association, and worked as their communications director, for close to 20 years. In the early 1990’s Nils started writing articles which he distributed through his newly created FishNet, a service which connected fishing industry leaders throughout the country and provided them with fresh and unique views on fishery matters. His innate inquisitiveness, investigative skills, and intelligence, combined to make him one of the most knowledgeable people in the fishing industry. Did I mention Nils was a great writer? Visit his FishNet USA.com website and explore his over 2,500 pages of writings that cover every possible issue that the fishing industry has faced over the last 50 years. His years working as a government bureaucrat taught him organizational skills, that fishermen lack. He used them to good account in helping New Jersey fishermen reorganize a fishing Association after both the New Jersey commercial Fishermen’s association, and the Cape May Fishermen’s association folded, forming the GSSA. His organization skills were put to good use, as Nils arranged meetings with politicians and NMFS bureaucrat’s even as he was holding his nose.
After creating FishNet USA to distribute his writings he created another industry group, the Sea Food Coalition, [SFC] which he used to connect industry leaders from around the country to each other, allowing real time discussions on issues facing the industry such as Magnuson act reauthorization. The SFC was instrumental in organizing two huge fishing industry rallies in Washington DC, in 2010 five thousand fishermen and families attended the United We Fish rally, and two years later in 2012 the Keep Fishermen Fishing Rally matched that in attendance focusing on the Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization. These rallies would not have been possible without the communications network that Nils developed, which linked
fishermen from Maine to Alaska.
Among Nils best writings was his exposure of the Anti-fishing movement that was being funded by the PEW charitable trusts. Nils discovered that the overfishing mantra that was being
pushed by NMFS had its roots through PEW funding of anti-fishing groups, such as Oceana, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, among many. These articles are available in the FishNet website. A note about FishNet USA, Nils purposely did not organize his articles in any type of order, he believed that it is better to have to look through his writings, because you will in evidently be intrigued by another article’s title and read that, resulting in the reader learning more than they expected. For years I urged Nils to collect his writings into a book but he always resisted, maybe because the book would have to have too many volumes to include them all, but if a person wishes to learn about almost any topic involving the US fishing industry in the last 50 years, visit his FishNet USA site. Nils also wrote a column in National Fisherman magazine for a while, and later was a featured writer in Fisherynation.com, where his articles
are still available to read in the featured writer’s section.
Nils was a quiet, well-spoken man, who didn’t like public speaking, he let his writing speak for him, but he was not afraid to speak his mind or voice his opinion among small groups of fishermen, or fishery managers. Because he was not raised as a fisherman he was able to look at things in a different way then fishermen see them, and provide educated, intelligent, advice on the topic on hand. He wrote like a surgeon, carefully dissecting each topic in his insightful manner, providing the information needed so that the reader can use their own judgement in forming an opinion. I’ve known Nils for over thirty-five years, and learned a lot about writing from him, but while I’m subtle as a flying Mallet, Nils used a scalpel as his weapon of choice. I consider Nils to be a Guru for his dispensing of knowledge to others, but he could also be considered a Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain who made things happen. He didn’t like the spotlight, and unfortunately the fractured sectors of the fishing industry never coalesced into a united national organization despite his best efforts. Some of his best writing was in the 1990’s, when the internet was just being created by Al Gore, so most people have not read it. I urge you to indulge in Nil’s work, as knowledge is power, and Nil’s writing is overflowing with knowledge. While Nils has moved on, he has left us a large volume of knowledge we would be wise to listen to.
Due to Nil’s unexpected demise, funeral arrangements are still being discussed, as his preferred method of burial, a Viking funeral, is illegal in Florida. If you wish to offer condolences
to Pat, Nil’s jr. and Janet, you can use his email address to send it to; nilsstolpe@fishnet- usa.com
I got to know Nils by going to Mid Atlantic council meetings and New England fisheries management council meetings in the 90’s and early 2000’s. His keen insight and recognition of the lies and falsehoods being perpetrated against the fishermen and the industry was a breath of fresh air coming from such a well educated man. He saw what was happening and how the environmental industry was using the fishing industry as a tool to bamboozle the unknowing public to generate revenue based on their falsehoods.
I considered Nils a huge friend of the industry and myself personally. Those are going to be very tough shoes to fill.
To his family, please accept my deepest condolences may he rest in peace.
I got to know Nils soon after I was appointed to the NEFMC & eventually began attending some of the Mid-Atl Council Meetings. As many will tell you & say how invested he was to the fishing industry, it’s difficult to understand how deeply he cared not only for the fishermen, but the resource as well.
Maybe it was because he could look at it & us as a whole from 20,000 feet, & see us better than we could ourselves, that he devoted so much of his life’s effort to us.
I told him thanks many times, but not nearly enough! To his family & friends, thank you for sharing him with us.
Capt. Jim Kendall
New Bedford Seafood Consulting
I met Nils in Washington DC shortly after I started with the North Carolina Fisheries Association in 1987.
He was a tremendous asset to the commercial fishing community and a personal friend.
I recently stepped down from NCFA and regret not making the call to let him know about my decision. He will be missed.
Jerry Schill
I’m very sad to hear about Nils, he was a very intelligent guy and we were lucky to have him working for us as commercial fishermen