March 23, 2017 — After Maine’s lobster industry set sales records for a second straight year, area fishermen are enjoying the boom while the water is warm.
Literally.
Rising sea temperatures are benefiting Maine’s iconic crustacean, leading to an increase in population while other marine species, such as soft-shell crabs, have suffered a decline, according to fishermen who spoke at a March 16 Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association panel.
But the factors for today’s success may portend tomorrow’s economic and cultural disaster, according to some area fishermen.
“We’re going to start going down when it gets warmer,” Maine Lobstermen’s Association President Dave Cousens told the audience at the Frontier Cafe.
Cousens was joined by MCFA President Gerry Cushing, of Port Clyde; Chebeague Island fisherman Alex Todd, and lobsterman Steve Train of Long Island.
Between July and October 2016, Cousens said, the ocean temperature was 60 degrees where he fishes in South Thomaston – a rise of three degrees since he began hauling traps three decades ago.
If temperatures rise three more degrees, he said, “lobster larvae will not survive. That’s what we’re facing.”
Last year, Maine fishermen hauled a record $130 million pounds of lobster, and the industry saw its value rocket $30 million, according to the Department of Marine Resources.
But the panelists warned the boom will be temporary.
“You don’t have to look too far south to see what’s coming,” Cousens said, noting the sharp demise of lobster populations off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Long Island, New York.
“That line’s just moving north,” Scott Moody, owner of Moody’s Seafood in Cundy’s Harbor, agreed the next day over the phone.
Moody, a fourth-generation lobsterman, fished in Harpswell for 30 years before starting his wholesale business, which includes five retail locations along Maine’s coast.
He buys directly from lobstermen and shellfish harvesters, and sells their product mostly to a distributor in Boston.
“In shellfish, we’ve seen a big turn,” Moody said last week. “I used to buy about $1 million in soft-shell (clams) in the Harpswell location,” at 337 Cundy’s Harbor Road.
“Since the climate change, I’m doing ($750,000) in hard-shell and only $250,000 in soft-shell,” he said.
Years ago, waiting to unload at his Boston distributor, “I’d be sitting behind five or six trucks of soft-shell clams,” he recalled. “They started to disappear. Then I’ve see guys bringing in hard-shell.”
He explained how warming waters increased the number of predators, such as Japanese green crabs, that can smash a clam’s soft shell.