Scientists see early indications of lobst...( ORONO Maine -- A team of scientists...)

ORONO, Maine -- A team of scientists from the University of Maine and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in West Boothbay Harbor, Maine, has found early indications of a decline in the lobster population in the Gulf of Maine.

"The abundance of juvenile lobsters in key lobster producing regions of mid-coast Maine appears to be declining," say Robert Steneck of UMaine and Lew Incze and Richard Wahle of Bigelow. "We expect landings in those regions and possibly elsewhere to decline sometime during the next two to four years. Given that lobsters are the single most valuable species in Maines fisheries, we think it is important to alert the lobster industry, state managers, policy makers and the general public to our findings."

Preliminary estimates suggest that the decline in Penobscot Bay may be on the order of 40%. For more than a decade, Steneck, Incze and Wahle have been working to develop a means of predicting lobster abundance and landings. Their approach differs from those traditionally used in Maine and New England by independently monitoring three different lobster life stages: 1) larvae in the water, 2) newly settled individuals on the bottom, and 3) older juvenile lobsters.

Their research has measured linkages between each of these three successive stages. Larval lobsters in coastal zones dive to become the new year-class of lobsters on the bottom, and if these lobsters survive, they become juvenile lobsters and eventually future landings of adult lobsters. "It's similar to counting the number of seeds you sow in your garden and finding that they correspond to some reduced number of seedlings and eventually the plants you harvest," says Steneck.

"Predicting lobster abundances or landings is no easier than predicting the economy or the weather. While local lobster landings may generally reflect local lobster abundance, measuring abundance is fraught with uncertainty. We can never be sure that we know the abundance of any phase in
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Contact: Robert Steneck
steneck@maine.edu
207-563-3146, ext233
University of Maine
21-Jan-2001