Throughout most of the past twenty years, the Southern New
England lobster stock steadily declined, and eventually collapsed, while
fishery managers failed to take any meaningful action to address the problem.
Yet, even as southern New England lobster abundance fell to new lows, Gulf of
Maine lobster were becoming more abundant. The 2009 benchmark stock assessment
found Gulf of Maine lobster abundance “at a record high,” and reported that
landings had increased from 19,200 metric tons (mt) in 1990 to 37,300 mt by
2006. The
2015 benchmark assessment revealed that landings had since soared to
new highs, peaking at 64,000 mt in 2013, and averaging 51,000 mt per year
between 2008 and 2013. Gulf of Maine landings rose even higher, to 68,456
mt, in 2018; average annual landings rose as well, to
63,016 mt for the years 2014 through 2019.
But fisheries managers were beginning to notice some signs
suggesting that all was not well.
A Technical Committee report
issued in 2015 noted that while the abundance of adult Gulf of Maine
lobsters was very high, there had been a decline in the number of older lobster
larvae, as well as in the number of young-of-the-year lobster settling to the
ocean bottom. The report advised that, should the Management Board become
concerned about a possible decline in recruitment and wish to take some sort of
action, “simulation calculations suggest that increasing the minimum carapace
length has the potential to produce similar total landings by weight, with a
smaller number of lobsters but at larger sizes. However, because lobsters would
survive longer before capture, such changes in [minimum carapace length] could
result in a significant increase in the numbers of mature lobsters and
[spawning stock biomass], potentially adding resilience to the lobster
population.”
The issue of increasing the minimum carapace
length—effectively, increasing the minimum size—for Gulf of Maine lobster has
been debated ever since.
To Head Off Stock Collapse
The Management Board got off to a good start, empaneling a
Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank Lobster Subcommittee (Subcommittee) that, in
2017, produced
a report that, among other things, urged that managers heed the
lessons learned from the collapse of the Southern New England stock. Among
those lessons was the warning to “Be proactive: Given the rapid
decline in the [Southern New England] stock as well as the time needed to
develop, comment on, and implement regulatory changes, initiating actions after
landings have started to decline will be too late.”
A subsequent
Subcommittee report advised that, as part of such proactive measures,
“triggers be developed which require management action [in response to
declining recruitment while adult lobsters are still] at a higher abundance.
The nature of such triggers…as well as the management response…still needs to
be developed; however, the Subcommittee recommends Board members initiate
conversations with industry early in the…process to field potential goals and
gain consensus…”
In accordance with that recommendation, at the Management
Board’s August meeting, Patrick Keliher, a Maine fisheries manager, moved
to “initiate an addendum to consider standardized management measures in the
Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank stock. This addendum is intended to be a proactive
management response to increase the resiliency of the stock.” His motion was
seconded by New Hampshire’s Governor’s Appointee, Richie White, and was adopted
by unanimous consent.
With the motion approved, David Borden, the Management Board
Chair and Rhode Island’s Governor’s Appointee, observed that, “from a southern
New England perspective, there are scary parallels that are going on” between
the collapse of the Southern New England stock and what was beginning to occur
in the Gulf of Maine. The members of the Management Board clearly understood
the potential threat arising off the northern New England coast.
ASMFC staff began
to develop the proactive management measures, which would become Addendum
XXXII to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan (Addendum
XXVII) for Atlantic Lobster, in early 2018, although development
stalled as other issues were given higher priority by the Management
Board.
But at the Management
Board’s October 2020 meeting, Mr. Borden warned against delaying too long:
“I would just simply note, state the obvious, that if we start an addendum
today and it takes us two or three years to finish that addendum, which it
usually does. Then we adopt it, and then it takes another two or three years
for NOAA to do about federal waters. It’s a long period of time. If you factor
in the point I made about southern New England, I think there is some urgency
here to deal with some of the issues that the Board attempted to deal with before.”
Such warning was heeded at the
February 2021 Management Board meeting. Mr. Keliher chose to “Move to
re-initiate the [Plan Development Team] and Technical Committee work on the
Gulf of Maine resiliency addendum. The addendum should focus on a trigger
mechanism such that, upon reaching of the trigger, measures would be automatically
implemented to improve the biological resiliency of the Gulf of Maine/Georges
Bank stock.” Cheri Patterson, the New Hampshire fisheries manager, seconded the
motion.
In support of his motion, Mr. Keliher argued that
I would hate to be in the situation that we were in with
southern New England when the Board was continually trying to develop plans,
and the stock continued to decline. We’re start to see some slipping now with
the stock. As I said, we’ve seen a decrease in landings now a couple years in a
row.
There are some issues with settlement as well as ventless
trap surveys. I think it would be incredibly prudent, at this point in time, to
have a very focused measure in place that deals with a reaction, an automatic
reaction to ensure that we don’t fall into that trap, where it’s just too late,
and we’re always trying to react.
Mr. White expressed his support for the motion, but also
issued a caution:
I fully support this. It’s forward thinking. I think it’s
something that could make a difference in the future. I think the problem will
be, or the issue that we’ll have to figure out, is just as in southern New
England, there was action taken, it was just way short of what the Technical
Committee recommended.
It’s one thing to say we’re going to have and trigger and
we’re going to take action, but will the action or can this be written such
that the action will be what’s needed to correct the measures? That will be the
difficult part, because there certainly will be push back from fishermen, to
take less severe actions, conservation equivalency, you know do less than we
really need to do. Anyway, that will be a challenge, but I fully support it.
This is a smart thing to do.
Mr. White’s comments would prove to be prophetic.
The motion passed by unanimous consent.
Nearly a full year later, at the January
2022 Management Board meeting, the first complete draft of Addendum XXVII
was presented and approved, but it was
never released for public comment, as the Management Board instead
chose to reconsider the document’s management options and their possible
financial impact on lobster fishermen. One year later, at the Management
Board’s January 2023 meeting, a modified Addendum XXVII was finally
approved and released for public comment.
A Short-Term Perspective
As might be expected, the comments
were overwhelmingly negative, with fishermen happy with their current
landings, and unconcerned about what the future might bring if no management
action was taken. While some saw a benefit in standardizing management measures
across the various lobster conservation and management areas—of the 119 oral
and written comments received on the topic, 46 (39%) supported at least some
degree of standardization—proposals to adopt any sort of proactive management
measure, that might prevent the sort of stock collapse that occurred in southern
New England, were extremely unpopular, finding support in only 18 (14.5%) of
the 124 comments addressing the issue, while 106 (85.5%) opposed any and all
measures that might halt such collapse before it began, but might also reduce
fishermen’s short-term incomes.
Those who opposed proactive management sounded a few common
themes. Many feared that increasing the minimum size would put them at a
competitive disadvantage, as smaller Canadian lobsters would continue to be
shipped into the United States. Others argued solely from an economic
standpoint, saying that they made a substantial investment in their permits,
and pay high prices for fuel and bait, and so should not be expected to take a
cut in their lobster-derived income.
Some fishermen didn’t believe the survey data. Some accepted
the data, but argued that any trigger should be based on a longer, 10-year time
series, rather than just the three years that Addendum XXVII would use.
There were fishermen who claimed that they were not
observing any decline in lobster numbers, while others argued that if there was
a decline, it was just part of a “natural cycle.” As one Massachusetts
lobsterman noted, “my observations have seen periods of plenty and then periods
of not so plenty. Cycles have come and go without regulations…Cycles in this
fishery occur, Mother Nature sees to it.”
Many fishermen thought that managers would do better
focusing their attention on the threat that wind turbines allegedly posed, with
one Maine lobsterman saying, “I am really worried about the wind mills in the
future and that will affect where everyone will fish. And there will be an
impact on the lobsters from the sonic boom. Lobsters are very reactive to waves
and noise in the water and if we blind the antennas, what will happen? We had
the earthquake, the lobsters disappeared for a bit. It is going to be the same
with the windmills.”
Yet, despite such comments, most Management Board members
understood the need to act to avert a crisis, rather than merely responding to
a crisis that has already occurred. They agreed that management action, in the
form of an increased minimum size and, eventually, requiring larger escape
vents in lobster traps, must be taken if data from standardized surveys
indicated that the abundance of recruits (defined as lobsters with a carapace
length measuring between 71 and 80 millimeters) fell by more than 35% below the
average for the years 2016-2018. The final version of Addendum XXVII was
adopted at the May
2023 Management Board meeting.
An Unpleasant Surprise
At that point, no one thought that the management trigger
would be tripped very soon, but on October 2, 2023, the Technical
Committee notified
the Management Board that, once 2022 survey data was considered,
recruit abundance had fallen 39.1% below the 2016-2018 average. The number of
young lobsters recruiting into the stock had fallen so quickly that the trigger
had been tripped less than six months after Addendum XXVII’s adoption.
Talks with Canada were still going on, in the hope that the
problem of smaller Canadian lobsters entering the United States market might be
resolved, and there was a real question as to whether enough of the gauges
needed to determine whether lobsters met the new minimum size would be
available. To provide some breathing room, the Management Board, at its October
2023 meeting, decided to delay implementation of the new minimum size
until January 1, 2025. However, those issues, and in particular the questions
surrounding Canadian imports, dragged on, leading the Management Board to further
delay implementation, until July 1, 2025.
Fishermen oppose any new rules
As 2025 began, the fishermen most affected by Addendum XXVII
demanded that their states go out of compliance with its provisions. In New
Hampshire, Governor Kelly Ayotte wrote
a letter to the ASMFC, in which she defiantly declared that, rather
than adopt the larger minimum size required by Addendum XXVII, the state would
maintain its current regulations. To emphasize her refusal to comply with the
addendum, she also posted an image to
the social media site X which featured the image of a lobster along with the
legend, “COME AND TAKE IT.”
In Maine, hostile lobstermen beset fisheries managers in a
series of hearings. The harangues from the audience grew so severe that the
usually unflappable Patrick Keliher, who then served as the state’s
Commissioner of Marine Resources, threw
an obscenity back at the crowd. But, in the end, the unruly fishermen
got what they wanted, as Maine’s governor agreed to withdraw the proposed
rules, and go out of compliance with Addendum XXVII.
The two states’ recalcitrance set up a showdown with the
ASMFC, which has the legal authority to refer such noncompliant states to the
United States’ Secretary of Commerce, who in turn may shut down
the affected fishery in such states’ waters until they adopt the
ASMFC-mandated management measures.
But that showdown never happened.
Instead, realizing that there was a very good chance that
the incoming Secretary of Commerce would not shut down Maine’s and New
Hampshire’s lobster fishery over what was admittedly a proactive, precautionary
measure, the Management Board backed down, and voted to initiate a
new addendum to rescind the size and vent requirements included in
Addendum XXVII.
It was something that most members of the Management Board
did not want to do.
Mr. Keliher noted that when he made the motion to initiate
Addendum XXVII more than seven years before, the addendum was “intended to be
the first of its kind, to provide proactive protection.” He added, “If I was
right and the industry was wrong, there could be many lobster boats for sale in
coming years.”
Despite his belief that Addendum XXVII was needed, he
acknowledged that conforming regulations would not have made it through Maine’s
rulemaking process due to the opposition of some industry members, who were
“very vocal to the point that some were completely out of line.” Still, he
maintained that “Rolling back resiliency measures is the wrong thing to do.
Absolutely the wrong thing to do. The Maine lobster industry is focused on the
short term…We were unable to convince the industry that now is the time to
act.”
New Hampshire’s Management Board members were also unafraid
to put the responsibility for Addendum XXVII’s demise on the shoulders of the
fishermen and related businesses. Cheri Patterson, a state fishery manager,
admitted that their state couldn’t move forward “due to pushback we have been
getting from the lobster industry.” Dennis Abbot, New Hampshire’s Legislative
Proxy, observed that “Before we can get anything out of the lobster industry
that’s helpful, we really need from them a buy-in that there is a problem.” And
Douglas Grout, the Governor’s Appointee, told the industry that it was time for
them to make the next move, saying, “I challenge the lobster industry in the
three states to come up with appropriate new measures that will put more
lobster eggs in the water. The downturn in the Gulf of Maine lobster population
has just begun.”
Dan McKiernan, the Massachusetts fishery manager, was
equally blunt, saying, “I ask the fishing industry to stop the nonsense,” of
baselessly criticizing the lobster science. He noted that the data underlying
Addendum XXVII’s trigger was very accurate, and that lobster landings closely
track survey indices.
When asked what might be acceptable to Maine’s lobster
industry, Mr. Kelliher responded that “What they will accept is unknown right
now…The Maine industry can’t expect to solve their problems on the backs of
others…There is a very vocal group that is saying that we don’t need to do
anything right now, and they are wrong. They are dead wrong. We need to do
something that helps stabilize this. It will be a sad friggin’ day if we don’t
do something.”
Yet, in the end, nothing was done. An addendum nearly eight
years in the making will be undone. And unless something unexpected happens,
Gulf of Maine lobster recruitment will continue to fall.
Perhaps the stock will collapse, as it did farther south.
Perhaps it will not. That’s something that we can’t currently know.
But one thing is nearly certain.
Should the lessons provided by Southern New England lobster
go unlearned, and a fishery now worth over $500,000,000 falls
into ruin, the people who blocked implementation of Addendum XXVII and
destroyed their own future will surely blame everyone—except themselves.
-----
This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog
of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/
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