July 6, 2013 — Commercial fishermen in Maine will remember 2012 as a year when normal fishing routines did not apply.
For elver fishermen in Maine, 2012 provided a substantial boost to their income as the demand and supply of the juvenile eels soared to historical highs. For lobstermen, it was more of a mixed bag as they cumulatively caught a record amount (126 million pounds) but on average earned only $2.69 per pound for their catch, the lowest price they’d gotten in nearly 20 years. And for fishermen who caught squid it was a complete surprise because, historically, squid have not been found along the Maine coast.
The reason for all these unexpected developments, according to scientists and fisheries officials, is that water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine last summer were several degrees higher than expected. This caused elvers to show up in large numbers early in the 10-week season, lobsters to appear in shallow waters and shed their shells weeks earlier than expected, and squid to swim north around Cape Cod into the gulf.
According to several scientists at University of Maine and Gulf of Maine Research Institute, there’s more where these surprise developments came from. Changes in climatological conditions are expected to continue to affect commercial fisheries as species follow their preferred temperature ranges north or change the timing of their seasonal characteristics or migrations.
Exactly how and when these changes might manifest in terms of individual species is unknown, which scientists say is why fisheries scientists and regulators should take steps to offer fishermen better predictions and more flexibility in reacting to the changes. In a paper recently published in the scientific publication Oceanography, they make recommendations on how to make fisheries management more adaptive and effective.
“In order to sustain marine ecosystems, scientists and fishery managers also need to be able to rapidly adjust in response to abrupt changes in climate,” Katherine Mills, one of the UMaine and GMRI scientists who authored the paper, said last week in a prepared statement.
Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News