[ad_1]
By Nicole Greenfield
Kristan Porter grew up in a fishing family in Cutler, Maine, where all roads lead to a career: fishing. (Porter's father was the only exception to the family .He was suffering from a terrible seasickness and then became a carpenter.) The 49-year-old boy, who works on boats since he's a kid and fishing alone since 1991, says the recent warming of Maine's fresh coastal waters has resulted in unprecedented lobster landings.
"The temperature in the Gulf of Maine creates the conditions for lobster, so it has helped our industry and has boosted Maine's economy," said Porter, the current president of Maine Lobstermen & # 39; Association. "But you never know what is waiting for you – if it continues to heat up, it may end up going the other way."
The Gulf of Maine sets frequent temperature records and warms faster than 99% of the world's oceans, largely because of climate change. In the meantime, its lobster population has increased by 515% between 1984 and 2014. In 1990, for example, lobster landings in Maine reached 28 million pounds. Ten years later, that figure was 57 million pounds. And every year since 2011, production has exceeded 100 million pounds, peaking at 132.6 million pounds in 2016 and turned lobster into a half billion dollar industry for the state.
Fishermen like Porter are reaping the benefits of this boom, but he is right: as the waters of the Gulf of Maine inevitably continue to warm, lobster populations will almost certainly decline. Crustaceans grow at temperatures between 61 and 64 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the water reaches 70 degrees, its oxygen level will collapse at the expense of a multitude of plants and marine animals, including lobsters. According to a 2018 study, the Gulf lobster population could drop by 40 to 62% over the next 30 years, bringing the industry back – the most valuable fishery in the country – in the early 2000s.
"Temperature is an important part of the story here," said Andrew Pershing, chief scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) and co-author of the study. "The lobster is likely to decline, which is obviously more worrying in the North, where it is booming."
Maine lobsters are normally brown, but about one in two million are blue.
Richard Wood / Flickr
Sea Institute marine scientist Susie Arnold of Rockland, Maine, notes that rising temperatures have also contributed to the decline in other fisheries such as shrimp, cod and scallops, leaving Maine fishermen in precarious dependence on thriving lobster populations. "Many fishermen in Maine's coastal communities depend on a single fishery, and as we see the effects of climate change, people are worried," she said. In response, Arnold and his colleagues encourage fishermen to think about diversification opportunities such as aquaculture. "We are trying to help coastal communities preserve their cultural heritage, especially to make a living through a healthy marine ecosystem."
State legislators also take note of the warming trend and rise to support climate action. Maine Governor Janet Mills has expressed concerns about the effects of climate change on the lobster industry in her February statement that the state would join the US Climate Alliance. She also linked the recent creation of the Maine Climate Council with ambitious state-wide renewable energy goals and the health of local fisheries. (Mills recently signed several climate bills that will help the state to move to 80% renewable energy by 2030 and reduce its emissions by 80% from 1990 levels from here 2050.)
Such a response to the effects of climate change that Maine faces provides an essential boost for the future of lobster and coastal communities dependent on fishing. Meanwhile, iconic marine creatures have already benefited from conservation efforts of several generations, as noted by Pershing and fellow researchers. In addition to meeting minimum and maximum catch size limits, anglers must refrain from taking female lobsters with eggs. Instead, when they catch these breeders, they cut their tail with a "V-notch", a mark that will stay with a lobster after several moults, then release them. (The cut tail signals to other fishermen that may encounter the same lobsters as they are prohibited.)
Porter and other fishermen compare this investment in the future of the industry to money in the bank. And marine scientists, including Lisa Suatoni of the NRDC, call this a smart climate policy. "Leaving these large fecund females in the water is a very good idea in the context of a rapidly changing environment," Suatoni said. "This is not just about achieving maximum sustainable yield, but also expanding our goal of achieving increased ecological or scalable resilience."
The decline of the lobster industry in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, where the waters are warmer and regulations less stringent than in Maine, is a telling tale for their northern neighbor. Landings in southern New England decreased by 70% between 1997 and 2007, but the industry resisted many conservation measures and again rejected fishing restrictions proposed by the Fisheries Commission Atlantic Shipping in 2017.
The proposed restrictions would have changed the legal catch size and reduced the number of traps allowed per fisherman, among other regulatory changes. If Maine had followed the same lax approach, Pershing and his colleagues estimate that lobster populations in the Gulf of Maine would have increased by less than half over their 30 years of study.
While Pershing praises Maine's prospective approach to strengthening the resilience of its lobster industry in the face of the growing climate crisis, "there is a limit to adaptation and management," he said. -he declares. "When we look beyond 2050 in a world of high CO2 emissions, we are witnessing a scenario in which fishing is really put to the test, regardless of the country's environment. way to avoid that, because everything becomes much more difficult in this world … and we can explain this very concretely with some fishing models. "
Pershing says climate change is impacting the entire food chain in the Gulf of Maine. For example, the marked decline of a tiny copepod species – a shrimp-like creature that is a favorite food for herring, seabirds, and endangered right whales – puts additional stress on these creatures.
"It's not just distant changes happening in the ocean where no one really sees them," Pershing said. "The consequences for the Gulf of Maine and the communities living on the coast are real."
Nicole Greenfield is a writer at NRDC. His articles on religion, the environment, popular culture and social justice have appeared in many publications.
Related articles on the web
[ad_2]
Source link