Saving Seafood

Lobster stock levels remain high in Gulf of Maine, but future issues cause concern

December 4, 2020 — When it comes to availability of their catch, the “now” looks solid for local commercial lobster fishermen, based on findings reported in the 2020 Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment. The assessment reported the stock at “record high abundance levels” in the Gulf of Maine. The good news continued: “Stock projections conducted as part of the assessment suggested a low probability of abundance declining below the abundance target over the next 10 years.” The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery now accounts for 90 percent of U.S. lobster landings, and, overall, landings increased fivefold in Maine from 1982 to when they peaked in 2016.

The outlook for southern New England remained poor, with a depleted fishery and no signs of resurgence. The research was conducted by several organizations, including the Department of Marine Resources, Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the University of Maine’s Sea Grant program and Lobster Institute. The assessment, released in October, was based on surveys conducted from 2016 through 2018.

However, once the research turns to the number of juvenile lobster settling on the sea floor, the future looks more uncertain.

“There’s this really puzzling disconnect between the surging numbers of lobsters we’ve been seeing over the past decade and the decline in larval settlement that we’ve seen,” said Richard Wahle, director of The Lobster Institute at the University of Maine.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Warming waters, local differences in oceanography affect Gulf of Maine lobster population

October 25, 2019 — Two new studies published by University of Maine scientists are putting a long-standing survey of the American lobster’s earliest life stages to its most rigorous test yet as an early warning system for trends in New England’s iconic fishery. The studies point to the role of a warming ocean and local differences in oceanography in the rise and fall of lobster populations along the coast from southern New England to Atlantic Canada.

One of the papers, published in the scientific journal Ecological Applications, was led by Noah Oppenheim, who completed his research as a UMaine graduate student in 2016, with co-authors Richard Wahle, Damian Brady and Andrew Goode from UMaine’s School of Marine Sciences, and Andrew Pershing from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. They report that the numbers of young-of-year lobsters populating shallow coastal nursery habitats each year, and temperature, provide a reasonably accurate prediction of trends in the lobster fishery some four to six years later.

Their model predicted regional differences in the recent record-breaking boom over the past decade, and now suggests the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery may be entering a period of decline; in effect a “cresting wave” of lobster abundance that may be heading northward in the region’s changing climate.

“Our model projects that the Gulf of Maine’s lobster landings will return to previous historical levels,” said Oppenheim, who is now executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the Institute for Fisheries Resources in San Francisco. “These results don’t suggest a lobster crash, but this tool could give the  and policymakers additional lead time as they make decisions about their businesses and communities in the years ahead.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

What can baby lobsters tell us about the future of Maine’s $1 billion fishery?

October 10, 2018 — The woman sitting on the bench above Peaks Island’s Spar Cove trained her binoculars on Curt Brown’s lobsterboat as it rocked in big swells a half-mile or so offshore. What was she thinking as she saw two men heave what appeared to be two very shallow, very heavy lobster traps onto the gunwale, then shove them into the sea? Did she wonder what they could possibly hope to catch with those stunted little lobster pots? Stunted little lobsters?

Well, yes, sort of. The men were researchers, and they were after baby lobsters, which on that steamy, late-June morning were feathery, newly hatched creatures no bigger than mosquitoes floating somewhere just below the ocean’s surface. As the wire crates sank beneath a bobbing white buoy, Brown plowed the boat forward and called out the location’s coordinates and depth, which University of Maine School of Marine Sciences professor Richard Wahle recorded in a notebook, next to the crate’s tag number. Meanwhile, Wahle’s research associate, Bill Favitta, and grad student Carl Huntsberger lifted two more crates onto the gunwale, readying them for the next drop. The team would repeat the routine 60 times over the next two days as it worked its way offshore to depths of 40 fathoms (or 240 feet).

This is a critical moment for research in Maine’s lobster fishery, which contributes more than $1 billion annually to the state’s economy and generates hundreds of jobs. After more than 30 years of ever-increasing landings — including dramatic, record-breaking surges in the last decade — the catch plunged 16 percent in 2017, and scientists and fishermen are concerned that it may prove to be a grim turning point. “A lot of the work we’re doing is trying to understand how environmental and fishing pressures are influencing trends in the abundance of lobsters, both geographically and over time,” says Wahle. A marine ecologist working at the intersection of fishery science, marine biology, and oceanography, he’s been studying lobsters around the world for 30 years.

Read the full story at Down East Magazine

 

Reading the genetic signature of the sea scallop

October 12, 2017 — Scallops are one of the most profitable fisheries in Maine, with a statewide value of nearly $7 million in 2016. The scallop fishery is also one of the most local, with small “day boats” staying close to shore.

Landings (and populations) have fluctuated over the years, with the latest peaks in the mid-1980s and 1990s. After severe declines in the early 2000s, the state instituted adaptive management, closing some areas and closely monitoring others. The approach seems to be successful, as landings have increased significantly, although the exact reasons are unclear and there are many questions left unanswered. Does closing a scallop bed protect spawning? How long does population recovery take? If a scallop bed is large, does that mean it’s healthy? Are all scallop beds equally productive?

Skylar Bayer, who graduated this spring from the University of Maine with a Ph.D. in marine biology, has been studying scallops for six years in Richard Wahle’s lab at the Darling Marine Center. Her research addresses questions about scallop reproduction. Scallops are broadcast spawners, releasing their eggs and sperm separately into the water. Fertilization happens by random encounters.

Bayer has learned what she knows about scallop spawning events from both laboratory and field experiments, manipulating the temperature to induce spawning, and weighing reproductive organs from scallops (the subject of her infamous Colbert Report appearance). Even under a microscope, however, it is difficult to distinguish the eggs, sperm, embryos and larvae of scallops from those of other bivalves. So, how can scientists understand how what happens in the open ocean?

Read the full story at Phys.org

Changing ecosystem, disease challenge lobster industry

June 14, 2016 — In the past decade, the Gulf of Maine has seen an increase in the number of lobsters and a higher demand for lobsters in international markets, which have translated into a boom for Maine’s lobster industry. Recently, however, there have been concerns about what effect a changing climate and disease threats may have on the lobster population off the coast of the state.

As water temperatures rose in the Atlantic off the coast of southern New England and Maine, lobster landings off the coast of Maine rose from under 40 million pounds in 1981 to 140 million in 2013, according to data from Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

By contrast, landings in southern New England went from just over 20 million pounds in 1997, to less than 5 million pounds in 2013.

That change in population is both a boon and a benefit to the lobster economy Down East.

“In New England, we’re sort of straddling the adverse and the positive effects, if you will, of a warming climate,” said Richard Wahle, a marine researcher at the University of Maine. “The fishery has all but collapsed in southern New England, whereas not too much farther north, just into the Gulf of Maine, we’re seeing record abundance of lobsters.

“Things have just really taken off in the past 10-15 years” in the eastern part of Maine, Wahle continued.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American