The Department of Marine Resources won’t be using researchers’ model to make management decisions, saying that forecasting fishery populations 30 years out is extremely difficult.
January 29, 2018 — The state agency that oversees Maine’s marine fisheries is questioning the reliability of a new study that predicts a sharp decline in Gulf of Maine lobsters over the next 30 years.
The Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration built a computer model that predicts the population will fall 40 to 62 percent by 2030.
But Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, won’t be using the model to help him decide how to manage the state’s most valuable fishery, which pumped $533.1 million into the state economy in 2016.
“(He) does not have confidence in a model that simulates what might happen decades in the future,” spokesman Jeff Nichols said. “This is a wild resource, making predictions extremely challenging.”
Thirty years ago, when landings were less than 20 million pounds, no one could have predicted that the Maine lobster fleet would be landing more than 130 million pounds a year in 2016, Nichols said.
“The commissioner and his science staff don’t question the science, but rather see this as an unreliable tool on which to base management decisions,” he said.
The department isn’t alone in having doubts about the study. Maine lobster dealers voiced skepticism, too, recalling previous erroneous lobster forecasts by some of the same scientific organizations.
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald