April 11, 2016 — There’s a bounty on the head of any Maine lobster found in Scandinavian waters.
Homarus americanus is a parasite-carrying, disease-spreading invasive alien threatening to breed infertile hybrids and destroy the local species.
That’s the view of researchers and politicians in Sweden, where Maine’s biggest export product is a feared intruder. Swedish officials describe a race against time to stop the invasion as they try to convince the 28-member European Union to halt all imports of the North American lobster, a move that could cost Maine lobstermen almost $11 million a year.
But some European chefs, whose patrons value the meaty North American crustacean over its tiny European cousin, say such a ban is premature and would have dire consequences for their establishments.
Sweden has been sounding the alarm since 2008, when a trawler first netted three North American lobsters with rubber bands on their claws off its west coast. Since then, 32 North American lobsters have been caught in Swedish waters, a sign they had been released into the ocean or escaped despite national prohibitions to hold American lobsters in net cages. Most of them have been caught in the Gullmar Fjord, causing increasing alarm among researchers at the Department for Aquatic Resources in the Swedish city of Lysekil.