WILL MAINE LOBSTER BENEFIT FROM LESSONS LEARNED?

Nearly a decade ago, I wrote a piece for the Marine Fish Conservation Network’s “From the Waterfront” blog called “A Lesson from Lobsters.”  It described how the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Management Board received very clear scientific advice telling it that the Southern New England stock of lobster was in significant trouble and how, instead of taking the only action that might have helpt the stock rebuild, the Management Board hemmed and hawed, and did everything within its power to avoid taking the needed action, thus causing the stock to enter a steep and very probably permanent decline.

Today, the ASMFC admits that the Southern New England lobster stock is experiencing

“record low abundance and recruitment…[and] remains severely depleted with poor prospects of recovery.”

Fortunately, at the time the last benchmark stock assessment for lobster was released in 2020, the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank stock was not only doing well, but was at a record high level of abundance.

Of course, in the ocean, nothing remains the same, and the ASMFC now reports that

“since 2012, lobster settlement surveys throughout the [Gulf of Maine] have generally been below the time series averages in all areas.  These surveys, which measure trends in the abundance of juvenile lobsters, can be used to track populations and potentially forecast future landings.  Persistent low settlement could foreshadow declines in recruitment and landings.  In the most recent years of the time series, declines in recruitment indices have also been observed.”

This time, the Management Board didn’t sit on its hands, and instead adopted Addendum XXVII to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American Lobster, in order to increase protection of the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank lobster stock in May 2023.  Addendum XXVII provides that, if managers observe a 35% decline in the recruit abundance index for any management area (compared to the three-year average index during the years 2016 through 2018), changes must be made to the gauge used to determine whether a lobster is legal-sized and, in some areas to the size of the escape vents in lobster traps.

When Addendum XXVII was adopted, no one realized how soon the recruit abundance trigger was going to be tripped.  Just five months later, the American Lobster Technical Committee informed the Management Board that when 2022 data was added to the recruitment time series, the recruitment abundance index for the Gulf of Maine region fell 39% below the 2016-2018 average, and that more restrictive management measures would thus be required.  The first of those measures, increasing the minimum gauge size (which measures the lobsters’ carapace from the back of the eye socket to the back of that shell) from 3 ¼ to 3 5/16 inches, would originally have been put in place no later than June 1, 2024. 

However, due to practical difficulties associated with the unexpected announcement, including the need to manufacture now size gauges and get them into the hands of lobstermen, the Management Board agreed to Maine’s request to defer the new size limit to January 1, 2025.

Even with that delay in implementation, Maine’s lobstermen aren’t pleased with the new management measure.  As is typically the case when fishermen challenge new regulations, they expressed doubts about the science while expressing economic concerns.

The data used to determine the number of juvenile lobster recruiting into the stock is developed through annual surveys, using trawls and ventless lobster traps, conducted by Maine’s Department of Marine Resources.  Conducting the survey in a similar manner each year allows Maine fishery managers to create an index that can be used to gauge annual recruitment success.  It was that index which suggests a recent, significant decline in recruitment.

Maine lobster landings also suggest that there are fewer lobster around today than there were a few years ago.  Such landings reached an all-time high of 132 million pounds in 2016, but have declined since then, falling to just 98 million pounds in 2022.  According to an article in The Ellsworth American, a Maine newspaper, Patrick Kelliher, the Commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, predicted that when 2023 landings data is finalized,

“We’re going to be quite a bit less than 100 million.”

Predictably, fishermen question the data, with The Ellsworth American reporting that

“some fishermen, like Jack Merrill of Cranberry Island, told [fishery managers] that they are seeing a boom in lobsters ‘egging out’ or females bearing eggs that will grow into adult, legal-sized lobsters to catch…

“’Right now, there’s so many eggers—there’s too many of them, and it’s only going to get worse,’ Merrill said.”

Exactly how one determines that there are “too many” reproducing females, or why having even more such females makes things “worse,” was never made particularly clear.

Merrill was also apparently concerned that the minimum size increase would have a negative financial impact, in part because small lobsters sell well, being less expensive than larger individuals, and also because the increase in minimum size will not impact Canadian lobstermen, who can continue to retain the smaller individuals. 

Merrill noted that, given market conditions, Canada has no incentive to increase its minimum size.  Another lobsterman, eyeing he Canadian fishery, reportedly made the defiant statement that

“I am not going to throw a lobster over that’s going to go to Canada”

to be caught and sold there.

However, Commissioner Kelliher was adamant about the need for management action, if Gulf of Maine lobster are to escape the fate that overcame the Southern New England stock.  He told lobstermen

“What we did see in southern New England was a complete failure of management to act in time once the decline started.  Management [in Maine] wanted to ensure that did not happen in the most valuable fishery in the state.”

As he patiently explained,

“The whole idea is to avoid a crisis.”

Commissioner Kelliher, it seems, did learn the lesson taught by the Southern New England lobsters, and has taken it to heart.

And that’s a good thing, for a failure to respond quickly to a fishery’s problems only makes it more likely that they’ll get worse.

That was borne out in a 2006 paper published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, titled "Delay in fishery management:  diminished yield, longer rebuilding, and increased probability of stock collapse,” in which the authors simulated how eight overfished fish stocks, each with different characteristics, would be affected by varying lengths of delay before implementing fishery management measures needed to end overfishing and rebuild the stock.

The researchers concluded that

“Delay can cause markedly more severe management measures to be needed for rebuilding a stock…In our simulations, increasing delay in management increased the number of years a stock was below its [Minimum Stock Size Threshold].  Conversely, prompt management decreased the likelihood that a rebuilding plan would become necessary.

“Related to rebuilding plans is the recovery time frame.  As shown by our simulations, the required time frame increases with delay in management.  Consequently, delay may lead not only to more severe regulations, it also lengthens their duration, in some cases by decades.

“Our simulations indicate that delay in management can lead to stock collapse…In fisheries, economic collapse may occur prior to stock collapse…”

All of those things were known nearly a decade before the Management Board confronted—and ultimately did nothing meaningful to prevent—the decline of the southern New England lobster.

Fortunately, it appears that in the case of Maine lobster, managers are far more willing to confront their problems head-on, and act to address them.  For as the researchers also note,

“Another fact often overlooked—or perhaps considered an acceptable risk—is that some stocks, after being fished to low levels, have failed to recover, even under stringent management.  Thus, it seems entirely possible that “rational” delay can lead to the point of no return.  Although one cannot ignore the influence of favorable stochastic events on population and fishery dynamics, it hardly seems prudent to bet on them.”