August 26, 2019 — The New Jersey lobster boom has passed.
Tom Fote, legislative chairman for The Jersey Coast Anglers Association, recalls a time in the 1990s when warming waters off the Jersey Shore prompted the tasty crustaceans to reproduce more, attracting more boats to fish for them.
But then the water got too hot. The lobsters stopped reproducing as they had been.
“We were the canaries in the mines,” Fote said of anglers in New Jersey.
New Jersey has emerged as a top state in the nation experiencing climate change, according to a new analysis of climate data by The Washington Post.
New Jersey heated by nearly 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, since about the turn of the last century, the Post found. That’s double the average for the continental United States. Alaska, then Rhode Island crossed the 2-degree mark, the Post reported. New Jersey is close.