Call Sara Directly: (207) 259-5092

Sara Randall became Downeast Institute’s first Associate Director in late 2017. Prior to that, Sara coordinated the largest intertidal research project in Maine’s history for DEI. The field experiments she oversaw led to the discovery that predation, driven by warming ocean temperatures, is the root cause of southern Maine’s soft-shell clam decline.

Sara is deeply committed to restoring commercial fisheries and sustaining coastal communities. A native Mainer, she spent nine years as the Director of Programs for the largest fishermen’s trade organization on the west coast and its sister non-profit, Institute for Fisheries Resources, in San Francisco. She also worked to restore salmonid-bearing watersheds in remote areas of northern California as an AmeriCorps member.  Sara has represented commercial fishermen as an appointed member of the San Francisco Harbor Safety Committee and the San Francisco Food Policy Council, and has worked to advance sound fisheries and ocean management and policy in a variety of local, state, regional, and national contexts.

Sara earned a Masters degree from the University of Maine’s School of Policy and International Affairs.

She was elected to the Freeport Sewer District Board of Trustees in 2015 and serves as its Chair. She is also a member of the Freeport Shellfish Conservation Commission.