A new study by scientists in
Maine found that if global warming trends continue, lobsters will struggle to
survive by the year 2100
Associated Press
Saturday 24 September 2016
16.48 BST Last modified on Saturday 24 September 2016 17.45 BST
Baby lobsters might not be able
to survive in the ocean’s waters if the ocean continues to warm at the expected
rate.
That is the key finding of a
study performed by scientists in Maine, the state most
closely associated with lobster. The scientists, who are
affiliated with the University of Maine Darling Marine Center and Bigelow
Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, said the discovery could mean bad news for the
future of one of America’s most beloved seafood treats, as well as the industry
lobsters support.
The scientists found that lobster
larvae struggled to survive when they were reared in water five degrees
Fahrenheit warmer than the temperatures that are currently typical of the
western Gulf of Maine, a key lobster fishing area off of New England. Five
degrees is how much the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change expects the Gulf
of Maine’s temperature to warm by the year 2100.
The paper appears this month in
the scientific journal ICES Journal of Marine Science. It could serve as a
wake-up call that the lobster fishery faces a looming climate crisis that is
already visible in southern New England, said Jesica Waller, one of the study’s
authors.
“There has been a near total collapse in Rhode
Island, the southern end of the fishery, and we know our waters are getting
warmer,” Waller said. “We are hoping this research can be a jumping-off point
for more research into how lobsters might do over the next century.”
Right now, the country’s lobster
catch is strong, prices are high and steady and the industry is opening up new
markets in Asia, where a growing middle class is hungry for one of America’s
seafood status symbols.
US fishermen have topped 100m lbs
of lobster for seven years in a row after having never previously reached that
mark, and their catch topped a half billion dollars in value at the docks for
the first time in 2014.
But signs of the toll warming
waters can take on the fishery are noticeable in its southern reaches, where
scientists have said rising temperatures are contributing to the lobsters’
decline. The lobster catch south of Cape Cod fell to about 3.3m pounds in 2013,
16 years after it peaked at about 22mn in 1997.
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