May 30, 2024 — This year, May 15 marked the beginning of the lobster fishing season on the Outer Cape. The fishery is not an insignificant one here. There are 42 fishermen on the Outer Cape who collectively land about 830,000 pounds of lobster every year, according to data on the Mass. Lobstermen’s Association website. This represents about 5 percent of the Massachusetts fishery.
While overall the fishery seems stable, some lobstermen are seeing changes that have them worried about its future. Scientists are looking into what role the changing climate may be playing in those changes, but they don’t have definitive answers.
“It’s horrible,” said Mike Rego, a lobsterman and owner of the F/V Miss Lilly who operates out of Provincetown. “Last year was the worst year I ever had.”
Dana Pazolt, another Provincetown lobsterman who owns the F/V Black Sheep, said that the last four years have been slim for lobsters around the Outer Cape. “You’ve got to hunt for them,” he said. “I can’t tell you why that is.”
The surface waters of the Gulf of Maine are warming at a rate of about one degree per decade, faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
Meanwhile, in other areas, warming has already had an effect — it played a major role in causing the collapse of the lobster fishery in Long Island Sound in 1999.
Lobsters do appear to be shifting their range north. From 1985 to 2016, Maine experienced a 650-percent increase in its lobster population, according to data from the Maine Dept. of Marine Resources. This may be due in part to the decline in Atlantic cod, a lobster predator, but it is also likely due to warming temperatures making lobster conditions more favorable farther north.