June 1, 2020 — New research suggests that the U.S. lobster industry could place fewer traps in the water and still gain just as much profit. And that finding could play a role in the debate over what should be required of Maine lobstermen to reduce entanglements with endangered North Atlantic right whales.
The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed Marine Policy Journal. Lead researcher Hannah Myers is a graduate student at the University of Alaska’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Studies. She took a close look at landings and other data from lobster-fishing territory that crosses the international Hague Line between Nova Scotia and Maine.
“We found that Canadian fishers in the Gulf of Maine caught about the same amount of lobster using seven and a half times less effort than Maine fishers on the U.S. side,” she says.
The researchers found that while the Canadians spent fewer days at sea and fished fewer traps, the traps they pulled had almost four times as many lobsters in them.