PORTLAND, Maine — May 3, 2016 — Southern New England’s fading lobster fishery will be the subject of a battery of new regulations to try to save the crustacean’s population locally.
The number of adult lobsters in New England south of Cape Cod was estimated in 2013 to be about 10 million, which is one-fifth the total from the late 1990s. Scientists issued a report last year that said the historic and economically important species is shifting northward in large part due to the warming of the ocean.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s lobster management board voted on Monday to use new measures to address the lobster decline, which has dramatically reduced lobster catches off Rhode Island and Connecticut.
The new regulations could include a combination of things like closed seasons, closed fishing areas, trapping cutbacks and stricter standards about the minimum and maximum size of harvestable lobsters.
“We’ve clearly got an overfished stock. We’ve got multiple problems that we actually need to fix,” said David Borden, chair of the lobster board. “The climate’s changing. When you do this, there is a cost to the industry.”