May 15, 2023 — The American Lobster Management Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has approved new measures that could be used to provide additional protections to spawning lobsters. Addendum XXVII establishes a trigger mechanism that would automatically put into place annual gauge and escape vent sizes to increase the proportion of the population of lobsters that are “able to reproduce before being harvested, and to enhance stock resiliency by protecting larger lobsters of both sexes,” the board reported in a press release following its vote.
The vote on adoption came at the ASMFC’s 2023 Spring Meeting on May 2 in Arlington, Va.
According to Caitlin Starks, Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator at ASMFC, if lobster surveys register a decline in “recruit” stock of 35 percent or more from a reference level (equal to the three-year average from 2016 to 2018), a multi-year series of incremental changes to gauge and vent size will be initiated in the following fishing year.
Currently, the minimum gauge size for a lobster in Maine is 3-1/4 inches. This means that a lobster must be at least 3-1/4 inches from eye socket to edge of the carapace at the tail in order to be kept. Lobsters that are smaller than this size must be thrown back into the ocean.
The first change, coming in the spring following the year in which the trigger is reached, increases the minimum gauge size to 3-5/16 inches, up 1/16th inch. The next year’s (Year 3) change would increase that to 3-3/8, representing another 1/16th inch increase. In Year 4, required escape vents would increase in size as well.
Patrice McCarron, policy director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said her group opposed Addendum XXVII because it would create a size disparity with lobsters caught by Canadian fishermen and exported to the United States.