November 8, 2019 — In a warmer future, Maine fishermen will probably be catching squid or mackerel, not cod or herring.
They will probably have to travel farther and fine-tune their gear to catch the cold-water species that remain in the Gulf of Maine, like lobster and sea scallops, and be ready to fish the new species that will be calling a warmer Gulf of Maine home by then, like black sea bass.
“We face some challenges moving forward that will require adaptation to maintain our vibrant fisheries,” Katherine Mills, a research scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, said in an address Thursday, the fourth day of the five-day Gulf of Maine 2050 Symposium in Portland.
Mills gave the audience a peek at work that GMRI scientists and economists are doing to explore how New England fishing communities will be affected by rising sea temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, which is warming three to four times faster than the rest of the world’s oceans. The Gulf is expected to warm by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2055.