About John
John is a licensed salesperson with Atlantic Brokerage. A native New Englander and long-time Cape resident, John has strong ties to the community. After graduating from college, John worked as a commercial clammer and shortly after became interested in the plight of the region’s small boat fishing industry and determined to advocate for its future. He helped build the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association—the predecessor to the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.
John has spent his entire career working to protect the traditions of Cape Cod’s oldest industry and to create new opportunities for the next generation of fishermen. He has been the CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance since 2010. Before that, he served for a decade as the organization’s Policy Director. John’s work is the pursuit of new solutions to managing our marine environment. He is a strong advocate of including broader perspectives on current challenges and on approaches to protecting the ocean ecology. Whether he is engaged in fisheries management policy work or scientific projects, community education or local economic development, John is particularly interested in the power of public-private partnerships. He champions for a more holistic, modern approach to fisheries, through ecosystem-based fisheries management, a method that has become increasingly important as climate change significantly alters the ocean ecosystem.
John was a member of the New England Fishery Management Council from 2002-2011. He served five of those years as its chairman, guiding the Council through implementation of the newly amended Magnuson-Stevens Act as well as the region’s first two catch share programs. He was reappointed in January 2015 and appointed to his third consecutive three-year term in June of 2020. He has also been on the National Organics Safety Board, Joint Oceans Commission Initiative, the Massachusetts Ocean Advisory Council, and spent 13 years on the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission. John also serves on the Cape Cod Blue Economy Foundation. He is a graduate of Seton Hall University.
