The practical likelihood the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will vote this Spring to close all lobster fishing from Cape Cod south to Virginia is extremely doubtful, regardless of press stories to the contrary.
Despite some modest growth in lobster landings in the recent years, Dr. Robert Beyer, executive director of the Lobster Institute in Rockland, Maine. said “the brood stock of lobsters never has recovered from the massive die-off in Long Island Sound in 1999.” And he added, the conditions that caused this didn’t just happen in one year!
Reliable sources inside the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission say that the March meeting will almost certainly insure adoption of measures that will further restrict the commercial fishing of lobsters in Southern New England; most certainly all of Long Island Sound.
Read the complete story from Fishery News.