November 29, 2012 — Low prices and a market glut may be the biggest problems many Maine lobstermen had to deal with this year, but there are other looming challenges facing the industry, and they have more to do with the marine environment than money.
According to University of Maine marine biologist, Robert Steneck, the depletion of cod and the effects of global warming — along with existing economic challenges — are combining to test the ingenuity of lobstermen, even as the Gulf of Maine undergoes dramatic changes.
But the problem isn't too few lobsters; there are more than enough.
That abundance is a relatively new development, said Steneck, a professor in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine's Darling Marine Center in Walpole, during a presentation to academics, fisheries representatives and governmental officials at a lobster symposium in Portland Wednesday. The event, "The American Lobster in a Changing Ecosystem," runs through Friday.
The surge in the Gulf of Maine lobster population has been a boon to Maine, which now enjoys a "lucrative monoculture" in fisheries, with lobsters accounting for 85 percent of the value of harvested marine resources, Steneck said. The fishery, he said, "is better today than ever before."
Lobstermen expected this year's catch to compare favorably with last year's record catch of 100 million pounds, which was worth $330 million at last year's wholesale prices.
But with the population increase comes potential trouble. In environments of low biodiversity — the current state in the Gulf of Maine — disease and the effects of global warming can be disastrous because they can strike virtually the whole ecosystem, often swiftly and ferociously.
Even now, a synchronicity of conditions — abundant populations, an increase of 2 to 4 degrees in ocean temperatures and a resultant migration of different fish species northward into the Gulf of Maine — could create an ecosystem that makes lobsters more vulnerable to disease and stressed by new predators, Steneck said.
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald