October 21, 2024 — A new study finds that lobsters are relocating to new habitats in the Gulf of Maine.
The findings could have implications for how the lobster stock is measured and how the fishery is eventually managed.
Lobsters have typically favored rocky boulders and used those habitats as shelter. But a research team with the University of Maine found that the use of those habitats dropped by 60% over the last 25 years or so.
October 21, 2024 — It was a blessedly calm day as Scott Landry’s team set out in their inflatable boat to scan the glistening waters of Great South Channel between Rhode Island and Massachusetts for an endangered whale affectionately known as Wart. They were on a mission to save her life.
The group, from the nonprofit Center for Coastal Studies located in nearby Provincetown, had spent the better part of three years monitoring Wart after an aerial team spotted the North Atlantic right whale with a large piece of rope lodged in her mouth.
Instead of coming loose on its own, the fishing rope slowly tangled itself deeper into Wart’s baleens, hindering her ability to eat and reproduce. Finally, Landry’s team decided to take a more hands-on approach—a dangerous but necessary last resort.
“The first thing that people need to realize is that the animals do not know that we’re trying to help them out,” said Landry, the director of the center’s Marine Animal Entanglement Response Program. “These are just wild animals that we are approaching at a moment in their life that is quite horrible.”
October 4, 2024 — NOAA investigators have for the first time confirmed a link between the death of a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and the Maine lobster industry.
The whale, right whale #5120, was found dead off the coast of Massachusetts in January 2024, and a necropsy in February found it was entangled in gear with markings that NOAA said were consistent with rope used in Maine state water trap/pot buoy lines used for lobster fishing.
October 1, 2024 — On Thursday, August 29, 2024, NOAA Fisheries hosted a webinar looking at the future of ropeless, or pop-up, gear for the New England lobster fishery. NOAA’s Jennifer S. Goebel pointed out that the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team had recommended that large swaths of the Gulf of Maine and waters south of Cape Cod be subject to emergency closures and open to fishing with ropeless gear only.
Goebel noted, however, that the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries are currently in compliance with the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act; “the recommendations from the team were put on hold.” Goebel cited other legislation that calls for innovation in the adoption of gear technology as justification for efforts aimed at developing ropeless gear. “That seems to support the development of ropeless gear,” Goebel said, before outlining a 4-year plan to develop the technology and have final rules in place.
September 26, 2024 — Every year on September 25, the United States celebrates National Lobster Day. In 2015, Maine Senators Angus King and Susan Collins established it to recognize the importance of this crustacean to the country’s history and culture.
So to further celebrate the lobstermen and women on National Fisherman, we decided to share a few of our favorite articles all about lobster. Show some support to your local fishermen this week and buy some seafood!
In January 2024, the University of New England launched an ambitious research endeavor, decoding the genetic underpinnings of colored lobsters. The hope to unveil the reason behind the crazy-colored crustaceans may be closer than we think.
September 17, 2024 — There was a time not all that many years ago when the restaurant industry marketed lobster as a luxury item. With the exception of shoreside clam shacks and resort eateries, enjoying lobster was mostly a white-tablecloth experience.
These days, however, lobster is seemingly everywhere – in lobster rolls, as part of grilled cheese sandwiches, and as a mac & cheese mix-in. Restaurants at all price points are featuring lobster: This summer, chains like Friendly’s and 99 Restaurants had lobster rolls on their menus. Even independents are on the lobster bandwagon, as exemplified by Villa Napoletana in East Longmeadow, where a month-long lobster menu promotion is underway.
The industry’s appetite for lobster seems almost limitless. Cousins Maine Lobster, the food truck franchisor whose menu is lobster-dominated, this month announced plans to open another 250 outlets over the next five years. Some industry experts predict future demand for lobster to continue to grow at an 8%-plus rate
September 16, 2024 — A long-running dispute over lobster fishing rights on the disputed border between the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the U.S. state of Maine is heating up.
After being “harassed, threatened, and attacked” with shotguns, knives, and bear spray, Canadian fisheries enforcement officers appear to be pulling back on enforcement efforts, with as many as many as 35 percent of agents assigned to marine patrols in the area refusing to report for duty, according to Union of Health and Environment Workers President Shimen Fayad. Fayad’s union represents fishery enforcement officers across Canada, including around 100 conservation and protection supervisors and fishery officers in Nova Scotia and southwestern New Brunswick.
September 12, 2024 — Experiments conducted at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) have shown that female American lobsters groom their offspring, and the grooming behaviors appear to remain stable despite the temperature and acidity conditions projected for Maine’s coastal waters by the end of the century. A study by researchers at William & Mary’s Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences shows that the species may be more resilient to the effects of climate change than previously thought.
The study examines how a changing climate may impact the reproductive success of species that brood or incubate and hatch their eggs. The findings were published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series and suggested that American lobsters can handle future ocean changes well, as their egg care and survival rates stayed stable under different conditions through the study’s tests.
Digging into the study
The study’s researchers partnered with the Maine Department of Marine Resources to obtain 24 lobsters from commercial operations for the study for five months. They secured female lobsters at market size with all legs intact, which are commonly lost in the wild.
September 11, 2024 — According to a study by researchers at William & Mary’s Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences, the American lobster may be more resilient to the effects of climate change than expected. For the first time, experiments performed at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) have documented how female American lobsters groom their offspring, providing evidence that these behaviors are not significantly impacted by temperature and acidity levels forecasted for Maine’s coastal waters by the end of the century.
The findings are published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.
Despite being one of the largest commercial fisheries in the U.S. with an annual economic impact of more than $460 million in Maine alone, few studies have documented the reproductive behavior of female American lobsters. With the Gulf of Maine warming faster than nearly any other ocean surface on the planet, it’s important to understand how the effects of climate change will impact the sustainability of the species and the fishery it supports.
“Brood grooming by female lobsters has been anecdotally observed, but it had not been quantitatively recorded before,” said Abigail Sisti, who is completing her Ph.D. in Marine Science at the Batten School and is lead author on the study. “In other crustaceans, these behaviors can have a significant impact on the survival of their offspring. Because the environment supporting the lobster fishery is rapidly changing, we wanted to understand how it might impact the way they care for their offspring.”
Female American lobsters can produce thousands of eggs that they hold under their tails for long periods of time, between five to 12 months, as the embryos develop. In other crustaceans, grooming behaviors help clear out parasites, remove dead eggs and facilitate the flow of water carrying oxygen and nutrients through the densely packed egg masses.
The study was part of a larger effort to determine how multiple stressors affect the reproductive success of the species. In this study, the researchers were testing whether increases in water temperatures and acidity had an impact on grooming behaviors and embryo survival.
September 9, 2024 — Orange, blue, calico, two-toned and … cotton-candy colored?
Those are all the hues of lobsters that have showed up in fishers’ traps, supermarket seafood tanks and scientists’ laboratories over the last year. The funky-colored crustaceans inspire headlines that trumpet their rarity, with particularly uncommon baby blue-tinted critters described by some as “cotton-candy colored” often estimated at 1 in 100 million.
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A recent wave of these curious colored lobsters in Maine, New York, Colorado and beyond has scientists asking just how atypical the discolored arthropods really are. As is often the case in science, it’s complicated.
Lobsters’ color can vary due to genetic and dietary differences, and estimates about how rare certain colors are should be taken with a grain of salt, said Andrew Goode, lead administrative scientist for the American Lobster Settlement Index at the University of Maine. There is also no definitive source on the occurrence of lobster coloration abnormalities, scientists said.
“Anecdotally, they don’t taste any different either,” Goode said.
In the wild, lobsters typically have a mottled brown appearance, and they turn an orange-red color after they are boiled for eating. Lobsters can have color abnormalities due to mutation of genes that affect the proteins that bind to their shell pigments, Goode said.