March 2, 2016 — It’s too early to know what Maine’s 2015 lobster landings will look like, but there’s no doubt that the number will be huge.
In 2014, the last year for which the Department of Marine Resources has figures, Maine’s fishermen landed more than 123 million pounds of lobster — the third year in a row that landings topped 120 pounds — worth a record $457 million.
While last year’s numbers aren’t in, fishermen and dealers talk about a bonanza fishery, and mild weather saw the fishery stay active into December.
In a sense, the landings are unsurprising.
According to a 2015 Atlantic States Fisheries Management Commission stock assessment, the abundance of lobsters in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank showed a meteoric rise starting in 2008 and is now at an all-time high. In southern New England, though, the story is completely different.
From a peak in 1997, the southern New England stock fell swiftly to a point where, by 2004, it was well below what scientists consider the threshold of sustainability. Things leveled off briefly; then the resource began an ongoing plunge again in 2010.
According to last year’s assessment, the Gulf of Maine-Georges Bank stock is not depleted and is not being overfished. The estimated lobster population from 2011 to 2013 was 248 million lobsters, which is well above the abundance threshold — a red flag for fisheries managers — of 66 million lobsters.
In contrast, in the years 2011 to 2013, the southern New England stock was depleted at an estimated 10 million lobsters. The “red flag” abundance level is 24 million lobsters.