Is The Current Golden Age of Maine Lobsters About To End?

Someday, the only lobsters from Maine we'll be seeing will be the mythical Lobstahdogs (bitchcakesny's flickr).

Everybody loves a good lobster roll (even a fast food one) and the tasty crustaceans have been all over town this summer thanks in no small part to the booming lobster population in the Gulf of Maine. But is this golden age we're living in of plentiful and tasty lobsters actually a portent of a grim, lobster-less future? A new paper in Conservation Biology says yes, it very well could be.

The big issue is that the fisherman in Maine have become increasingly dependent on the lobsters that they haul in from the sea—which have been more than plentiful in the past few years. 80 percent of Maine's seafood income now comes lobstering and last year fisherman caught 94.7 million pounds of the buggers, worth about $313 million. That's way up from 2004 when they pulled in 71.6 million pounds. If something like an outbreak were to happen to that lobster population—as it has in other areas including southern New England waters—then Maine and its fisherman will be in a very precarious position. Such an event could also dramatically change the already shifting ecology of the Gulf's waters. Not to mention make those of us who love our Maine lobsters very sad.

So what to do? There are lots of ideas being thrown around (lobster less, reintroduce other fish back into the area, to name two) and lots of people are anxious about just how good the lobster hauls have been lately (“I don’t think there’s a lobsterman on the coast who isn’t concerned about this rapid expansion of catch,” Robin Alden, executive director of the Penobscot East Resource Center, told the Times. “It’s a little spooky.”) but no one solution has caught on. On the plus side, at least people are taking this issue seriously while the catches are still good, rather than waiting until they aren't.

Oh! And speaking of Maine lobsters? If you are a fan of Lots O' Lobstah, we've got swell news! The traveling lobster shack (which sources all its crustaceans from Maine) found a semi-permanent home at the South Street Seaport's Fulton Stall Market. They'll be there every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (well, at least until the inevitable lobster apocalypse).

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Garth Johnston in Food on August 23, 2011 3:10 PM

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Ron Huber

It's the offshore turbine "wind spills" that are really going to screw Maine's lobstering communities.
One reason for the robustness of the fishery: for hundreds of centuries, mass
quantities of Canadian lobster larvae have poured into Maine waters each
year from the Bay of Fundy, aboard the Eastern Maine Coastal Current,
adding their number to locally hatched lobsters. The influx of these
well-documented aliens means that even if too many adult lobsters are
captured and local spawning is reduced, our Canadian
lobster-larvae-friends are still dropping down the coast to move in.

This will stop, however, if the windwhacker wannabees pack that current full
of ocean windfarms. Why? Because windfarming is an extractive industry
and the kinetic energy it extracts is no longer there at that Gulf of
Maine location, no longer doing its bit to help boost that coastal
current along, as seawind does.

Nature abhors a vacuum; the combination of lower air pressure on the downwind side of the turbines, coupled with the loss of kinetic energy extracted by the windmills and diverted to power cables,( instead of striking the seasurface where, through Ekman Transfer, that energy enters the water column), means that the energetics of the water column in that location are chronically 24/7/365 de-energized. Without that natural power, and with the lower windspeed downwind of each turbine in an ocean windwarm, vast upwellings of seafloor water rise to the surface While they may bring nutrients they also bring billoins of gallons of colder water to the surface , in miles wide rising columns, aka "stratifications". When a water surface current loaded with baby lobsters and other plankton strikes these upwell strata, it slows. Some of it gets cooled, but much of it It diverts around the cold water upwelling and continues down coast.

Unfotunately the diversion may mean that the coastal current fails to drop any lobsters at the mouth of Penobscot Bay, the heart of Maine's lobster industry, instead passing that bay by and bequeathing the young crustaceans further south along the Gulf of Maine coast - as far away as Massachusetts Bay.

Solution? Site windfarms from 40 to 70 miles offshore. This has been endorsed by the University of Maine DeepCwind Consortium, but is opposed by the ocean wind carpetbaggers rushing into the Gulf of Maine, (closer to shore is cheaper for them, lobstermen be da**ed) These venture capital types, let by former governor Angus King, convinced the Baldacci admin to accept that a mere ten miles from shore is adequate. Its not!

The LePage admin got off to a lousy start antagonistic to the University and the DeepCwind consortium but has matured somewhat with changes in the Cabinet. If lobstermen press the governor hard to move the ocean wind goalpost back from ten miles offshore to 40 or more miles offshore, Maine can expect a continued annual influx of Canadian lobster larvae, keeping Maine's fishery well buffered from management blunders by DMR or ASMFC.

Details:
* A youtube animation of impact of windmills on lobsters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

* Norwegian study of ocean windfarm impacts on water currents.
https://wiki.met.no/_media/win...

More info at http://penbay.org/wind/mainewi...

augustojr

If they run out of lobster, they can just use crayfish, right Zabar's?

1429523

As a Mainer, I can assure you that lobstermen will fight tooth and nail any sort of restriction on fishing. It's definitely needed though. The Gulf of Maine is damn near fished out already, and if we're not careful, the lobster are going to go that route also.

Also, lobster are the fucking cockroaches of the sea, why do you people eat something that feeds on garbage?

anon

Maine has strict rules in place to help stop overfishing of lobsters. Maybe they need to apply more rules to other types fisherman in the area. Its about a 15 year wait list to get a lobster fishing license in Maine. So there are limited amounts of lobsters being trapped. They are also throwing back and tagging any lobster that has roe and it cannot be kept for 5 years after its initial catch. There is also a maximum size that can be kept (5 inch carapace) so that the bigger lobsters which are the best breeders stay in the water and keep breeding. Maine has done a far superior job compared to most of the northeast in curbing overfishing of lobster. They do have to worry about an outbreak however, but first need to figure out the cause and try to take measures to stop it. Maine's govt will step up and do what it needs to do bc otherwise the state will no longer be able to sustain population. Maines govt is the only state that has actually made laws that helped increase lobster population.

People eat alot of things. Like all that crap that grows in filthy dirt.