Saving Seafood

Conservation Practices Help Lobsters Weather Climate Change

January 29, 2018 — It’s no secret that the lobster fishery in southern New England is in trouble. The population has declined by almost eighty percent in the past few decades. In contrast, lobsters in the Gulf of Maine have exploded and the fishery has seen record landings. So, what gives?

Rising water temperatures are a big part of the story. Baby lobsters have a set-point: 61.5°F. Go much above that, and first-year lobsters start dying off. That’s what has been happening during recent summers in places like Buzzards Bay and Narragansett Bay. Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Maine, which is one of the most rapidly warming ocean areas anywhere in the world, the increase in temperatures has put lobsters into their sweet spot.

But that’s not where the story ends. A new study used a computer model to tease apart the influence of environmental changes and conservation practices, which differ significantly between Maine and southern New England. For generations, Maine lobstermen have been throwing back fertile females (after cutting a notch out of their tails so that they can be recognized even when they’re not carrying eggs) and the biggest lobsters. Those practices didn’t hit southern New England until a decade ago.

The conclusion of the new analysis is a bitter pill for southern New England lobstermen, according to Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer and head of the Ecosystem Modeling Lab at Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Read the full story at WCAI

 

New report says future of Maine lobster industry could be worse

January 29, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Warming ocean waters will have a big impact on Maine’s $547 million lobster industry in coming years, but the future would look a lot bleaker if not for the conservation efforts of the state’s thousands of lobster fishermen.

According to a study led by scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and NOAA Fisheries, conservation practices long advocated by Maine lobstermen are helping make the lobster fishery more resilient to climate change.

For generations, lobstermen in Maine have returned large lobsters and egg-bearing female lobsters to the water rather than keeping them. Lobstermen first marked the tails of the egg bearers with a distinctive “V-notch” to give them further protection.

According to the scientists, these conservation practices, developed by custom and now mandated by state law, distinguish the fishery in the Gulf of Maine, where Maine harvesters trap some 83 percent of all lobster landings, from southern New England, where fishermen historically refused to take the same steps to preserve large, reproductive lobsters.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study shows how warming waters and contrasting conservation practices have contributed to significantly different results in the two fisheries.

Over the past decade (at least until this past year), Maine lobster landings have climbed steadily, setting new records nearly every year. During the same time period, the southern New England lobster population, and lobster fishery, has collapsed.

According to figures compiled by regulators, the commercial lobster landings in Connecticut fell from more than 2.5 million pounds in 1995 to about 200,000 pounds in 2015. In Rhode Island, the catch fell from more than 5 million pounds in 1995 to less than 2.4 million pounds in 2015. In New York, the commercial lobster industry has virtually disappeared.

Led by Arnault Le Bris of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the scientists used advanced computer models to simulate the ecosystem under varying conditions. The results show that temperature change was the primary contributor to population changes, but conservation efforts made significant differences in how the lobster population responded.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

Fishing Gear Deaths, Low Birth Rate Tell Grave Tale for Right Whales

January 26, 2018 — About 25 North Atlantic right whales gathered south of the Vineyard this week, marking an early-season sighting of a species that scientists warn could go extinct in the next 20 years.

The sighting belies the plight of the species, Dr. Mark Baumgartner told a crowd of about 50 people gathered in the Gazette newsroom Tuesday for a talk. There are an estimated 450 whales left.

Mr. Baumgartner, a scientist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and president of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, said he and other scientists have documented an alarming decline in right whale calving rates alongside a rise in deaths from fishing gear entanglement.

“We have years, not decades to fix this problem. The longer we wait, the harder the problem gets to fix.” Mr. Baumgartner said. “We don’t need more science to be done on this species. We need to act.”

While the situation is grave, he said, solutions including weaker fishing rope and an emerging ropeless fishing technology that could reduce the number of entanglements that kill or injure the whales.

North Atlantic right whales are about the size of a city bus, and individuals can be identified by unique patterns of callosities on their heads. The whales eat copepods, tiny crustaceans, to the tune of one or two tons a day, Mr. Baumgartner said, the caloric equivalent of about 3,000 Big Macs.

Right whales got their name because they were the “right” whales to pursue during the whaling era. The whales are slow-moving, live near shore, and float after they are killed, making them easier to drag ashore.

The population was decimated beginning around the time of the Revolutionary War. “They’ve been down for along time, but not out,” Mr. Baumgartner said.

More recently, scientists have closely monitored the population from the southern Atlantic calving grounds they visit in the winter to feeding grounds off New England and Canada. Two recent trends paint a dire picture, Mr. Baumgartner said. Last winter, five right whale calves were born, the smallest number scientists have documented in 17 years. So far, he said, no calves have been seen this year. “This year I fear may be worse,” he said.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

 

Study: Maine’s lobster population will drop but fishery ‘not doomed’

January 26, 2018 — The lobster population in the Gulf of Maine could decline by nearly two-thirds by 2050, according to a scientific study released this week.

As bad as that sounds, scientists and industry representatives say the demise of the most valuable single-species fishery in the country is unlikely.

“It doesn’t mean Maine’s lobster fishery is doomed,” said Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at Gulf of Maine Research Institute and a co-author of the study.

The predicted decline was included in the results of a study conducted by GMRI and other research groups about the effect of conservation measures on lobster fisheries in the Gulf of Maine and off the southern New England coast.

The lobster population could decline between 40 percent and 62 percent over the next 32 years, depending on how much waters continue to warm in the Gulf of Maine, researchers found. The total stock of lobster for the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank is in the neighborhood of 300 million lobsters, according to the most recent stock assessment by Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

The study found that lobster conservation measures in Maine aimed at protecting reproductive females and oversize adult lobsters in general, which date back to the early 20th century, have helped amplify the temporary benefit of warming seas to the lobster population in the gulf, which is warming more quickly than 99.9 percent of the world’s oceans.

In comparison, the lack of similar measures in southern New England hurt the lobster population south of Cape Cod now that waters there have become too warm to help support the growth of juvenile lobsters.

“Maintaining measures to preserve large reproductive females can mitigate negative impacts of warming on the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery in future decades,” researchers wrote in the study, which was published Jan. 22 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If the gulf’s lobster population does drop by 40 or even 60 percent over the next 32 years, the decline will be more gradual than the boom that preceded it. At that decrease, the gulf’s average lobster populations would be “similar to those in the early 2000s,” GMRI officials said.

From 1997 through 2008, Maine’s annual harvests fluctuated between 47 million and 75 million pounds. It is only within the past 10 years, since Maine lobstermen harvested 64 million pounds in 2007, that statewide landings have doubled.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Maine awards 11 new fishing licenses for valuable baby eels

January 25, 2018 — For the first time in five years, the state has issued new licenses for Maine’s lucrative baby eel fishery.

Eleven people were chosen through a lottery that more than 3,000 Mainers hoped to win, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The deadline for submitting applications to participate was Jan. 15.

In 2013, the last time the state held the drawing, more than 5,000 people applied for the chance to win one of four new elver fishing licenses.

Each new licensee will be allowed to catch up to four pounds of baby eels, also known as elvers, which usually sell for more than $1,000 per pound. Since 2014, the average annual price paid to elver fishermen has varied from about $875 per pound to more than $2,100.

The licenses have become a hot commodity as the price for elvers has skyrocketed, driven by voracious demand in Asia for eels. In 2016, the most recent year for which statistics are available, approximately 1,000 licensed Maine fishermen netted nearly $13.5 million worth of elvers.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

Study: Warming Gulf of Maine endangering lobster stock

January 24, 2018 — Is the lobster boom on the decline in the Gulf of Maine because of warming waters? A newly released study by a Maine-based marine research group suggests that is the case.

The study, released Monday by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, touched on many of the same climate issues that have left researchers and lobster stakeholders anxious about the future.

“In the Gulf of Maine, the lobster fishery is vulnerable to future temperature increases,” GMRI said in the statement released with the study. “The researchers’ population projections suggest that lobster productivity will decrease as temperatures continue to warm, but continued conservation efforts can mitigate the impacts of future warming.”

The study, compiled with the University of Maine and NOAA Fisheries, said the anticipated decline highlights the need for vigilant conservation within the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery, especially since scientists say the gulf’s waters are warming faster than 99 percent of the rest of the world’s oceans.

Researchers said they expect the lobster population to decline from recent highs — GMRI pegs the peak year at 2010, when it estimated the Gulf of Maine lobster stock contained 518 million lobsters — to levels more in keeping with traditional lobstering years.

It estimates the population could shrink to about 261 million lobsters in 2050.

“The 30-year outlook for the Gulf of Maine fishery looks positive if conservation practices continue,” GMRI said. “In their 30-year projection, the researchers anticipate average populations similar to those in the early 2000s.”

Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, said lobster stock assessments in the Gulf of Maine have shown the annual settlement of young lobsters — when they transition from floating in open waters as plankton to settling on the bottom to begin the seven- to eight-year stretch it requires to mature — has declined from previous assessments.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Research Concludes Maine Conservation Technique Helped Drive Lobster Population Boom

January 24, 2018 — Lobster conservation techniques pioneered by Maine fishermen helped drive a population boom that’s led to record landings this century. That’s the conclusion of new, peer-reviewed research published today.

The paper also finds that lobstermen in southern New England could have used the same techniques to prevent or at least slow the collapse of their fisheries — even in the face of climate change — but they didn’t.

Cape Elizabeth lobsterman Curt Brown has been hauling traps since he was a kid. He says he quickly learned that when he pulled up a female lobster, covered in eggs, he was looking at the fishery’s future.

Maine lobstermen throw back lobsters like these, which produce eggs at a high rate, but other lobstermen do not

“You get used to seeing lobsters and then you see a lobster with eggs and it’s whole new animal,” he says. The underside of the tail is just covered with eggs.”

Since 1917, Maine lobstermen like Brown have used a technique known as “V-notching”: when they found an egg-bearing female in their traps, they would clip a “V” into the end of its tail, and throw it back. The next time it turns up in someone’s trap, even if it’s not showing eggs, the harvester knows it’s a fertile female, and throws it back. Later, the lobstermen also pushed the Legislature to impose limits on the size of the lobster they can keep — because the biggest ones produce the most eggs.

“I use my measure right here, right on the measure, at the end of the measure, is a little tool in the shape of a ‘V,'” Brown says. “So you just grab the lobster underside of the tail just like that and it cuts a V-notch right in the tail. Quick, painless, throw her back in and let her do more of her job.”

And those fertile females have been doing that job very well in Maine. Since the 1980s, lobster abundance here has grown by more than 500 percent, with landings shooting up from fewer than 20 million pounds in 1985, to more than 120 million pounds in 2015 with a value of more than a half billion dollars.

Read the full story at WNPR

 

Gulf of Maine lobster population past its peak, study says, and a big drop is due

January 23, 2018 — The Gulf of Maine lobster population will shrink 40 to 62 percent over the next 30 years because of rising ocean temperatures, according to a study published Monday.

As the water temperature rises – the northwest Atlantic ocean is warming at three times the global average rate – the number of lobster eggs that survive their first year of life will decrease, and the number of small-bodied lobster predators that eat those that remain will increase. Those effects will cause the lobster population to fall through 2050, according to a study by researchers at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.

Looking ahead 30 years, the researchers predict a lobster population “rewind” to the harvests documented in the early 2000s. In 2002, 6,800 license holders landed 63 million pounds of lobster valued at $210.9 million. By comparison, 5,660 license holders harvested 131 million pounds valued at $533.1 million in 2016.

“In our model, the Gulf of Maine started to cross over the optimal water temperature for lobster sometime in 2010, and the lobster population peaked three or four years ago,” said Andrew Pershing, GMRI’s chief scientific officer and one of the authors of the study. “We’ve seen this huge increase in landings, a huge economic boom, but we are coming off of that peak now, returning to a more traditional fishery.”

Industry leaders have been girding themselves for a decline in landings ever since the recent boom began. While not everybody believes the decline will happen that fast or fall so much, most lobstermen admit the impact that warming water has had on their fishery, said Dave Cousens, the president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. It drove up landings by pushing lobsters into the Gulf of Maine, and over time it will drive lobsters out to colder offshore waters or the Canadian Maritimes, he said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

The lobster catch has crashed in southern New England, but not in Maine. Here’s why.

January 23, 2018 — Scientists who study the warming of the ocean say in a new study that conservation practices have allowed northern New England’s lobster industry to thrive in the face of environmental changes.

The lobster fishery is the backbone of Maine’s economy, and business has been booming in recent years. Southern New England fishermen’s lobster catch, meanwhile, has plummeted. Ocean temperatures have risen in both areas, to levels that scientists have said is favorable for lobsters off northern New England and Canada but inhospitable for them in southern New England.

Scientists led by researchers at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland say differences in conservation practices have contributed to record hauls off Maine and population collapse just a few hundred miles south. Their findings were published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A key difference is that Maine lobstermen worked together decades ago to create a strategy to protect older, larger lobsters and egg-carrying females, said Andy Pershing, a scientist with Gulf of Maine Research Institute and one of the study authors.

Maine lobstermen return big lobsters to the sea, and mark a “v notch” on the tail of an egg-carrying lobster before throwing it back. The notching technique, used in Maine for about a century, provides a sign to other fishermen to leave the fertile lobsters alone. Fishermen in other states use the notch, too, but some got on board only recently; Connecticut established its program in the mid-2000s.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

 

New study: Industry conservation ethic proves critical to Gulf of Maine lobster fishery

January 22, 2018 — A new study, led by scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and colleagues at the University of Maine and NOAA, demonstrates how conservation practices championed by Maine lobstermen help make the lobster fishery resilient to climate change.

For generations, lobstermen in Maine have returned large lobsters to the sea and have designed a special way of marking egg-bearing lobsters to give them further protection. This conservation culture distinguishes the Gulf of Maine fishery from southern New England, where fishermen have not historically taken the same steps to preserve large, reproductive lobsters.

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows how warming waters and contrasting conservation practices contributed to simultaneous record landings in the Gulf of Maine fishery and  collapse in southern New England.

Led by Dr. Arnault Le Bris, the research team used advanced computer models to simulate the ecosystem under varying conditions, allowing them to understand the relative impacts of warming waters, conservation efforts, and other variables. Their results show that, while temperature change was the primary contributor to population changes, conservation efforts made a key difference in population resiliency.

Impacts of warming

Over 30 years (1984-2014), ocean temperatures increased rapidly in both regions. Warming in both regions shifted optimal summer ocean temperatures northeast, causing the southern New England  population to decline and the Gulf of Maine population boom. The researchers estimate that, during this 30-year period, the Gulf of Maine population increased by 515%, while the southern New England population declined by 78%. Challenges associated with warmer temperatures include decreased survival of larval lobsters, increased incidence of shell disease, and increased predation.

Read the full story at PHYS.org