It’s common to hear that there’s just no such thing as normal in the Gulf of Maine any longer due to climate change. As the Gulf has warmed, those things that lobstermen once considered stable, such as when lobsters move offshore or the time of molt, can’t be predicted reliably. This past year showed that unpredictability was the name of the game yet again.
While landings appear to be down in 2024, a good boat price made the year decent for many, but not all lobstermen. S. Mullin photo.
The rate of warming for the Gulf of Maine during summer months (1.04 °F per decade) is roughly four times faster than the summer warming rate for the world’s oceans (0.27 °F per decade). According to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf were particularly warm during June in 2024, when temperatures were about 4°F above the long-term average. That’s a lot of warm water. Temperatures moderated after June, rising about 1.5°F above the average during the rest of the summer.
Willis Spear, who fishes from Portland, started his season as usual in May. “The price was good but then it dropped down to $4 a pound. It’s hard to make it work at that price. It discouraged a lot of the Casco Bay guys from going. I’d say there was 30% fewer fishing,” he said.
He caught more hard-shell lobsters than shedders this year, which he attributed to fishing hard bottom off Cape Elizabeth. “The lobsters were small hard-shell lobsters. I only had one or two [traps] full of shedders all season,” he said.
He noticed that the water temperature began to change mid-summer. “I have a friend who has temperature sensors on his traps. He said the water was around 51°F in July, then went to 47°F in August,” he said. Spear, like many lobstermen, is acutely aware of the effect climate change has had on the Gulf. “You can’t predict the weather anymore. In the summer we don’t have the southwest wind in the afternoon. And the storms. I’ve been out and these small strong storms come right on top of you and no one predicted them,” he said.
It was the price he received for his catch that affected Spear the most this year, however. “Other people have other options for work,” he said. “But for me, this is it. I’ve got to go. When I was a kid you could go in the winter for scallops or shrimp. Not anymore. I just hope that next year the price doesn’t go down to $4. It’s not enough to make a living.”
York lobsterman Jeff White, on the other hand, said it was the price that made his season reasonably successful. “It was weird. A lot of guys in my area noticed they would get one good haul each month and then something would happen and the lobsters would disappear,” he said. “Guys who fish outside or inside all saw the same thing.”
The effects of climate change on the Gulf and the increased unpredictability of lobster fishing is something that White takes as a matter of course. “There is no normal. Every year is a new adventure. Forget what you learned last year, because every year is new.” White typically moves his traps around frequently during the season. This year he found it didn’t improve his catch.
He felt good when he got a decent haul, but he noticed it didn’t seem to last long. Jillian Robillard of Southern Maine Crabs, White’s buyer in Kittery, reported that lobstermen were all saying the same thing to her. Each time lobsters started showing up, they never stuck around.
“There are a thousand reasons why you’re not catching them. It’s the nature of the beast, it’s nature itself,” he said. “Next year will be different.”
In Downeast Maine, one lobsterman, who asked to remain anonymous, found his catch to be “average, like the last five years.” The price was good but keeping his traps supplied with bait was hard, not because bait was limited but because something other than lobsters was gobbling it up. “We were just overrun with crabs. They take the bait overnight,” he said. Lobster traps would come up full of crabs but there were no buyers for them.
On Beals Island, Dwight Carver saw his catch drop off in July. “The rest of the year I held on pound-for-pound compared to last year. The price difference more than made up for the drop in catch,” he said.
He noticed that where he fished, on hard bottom approximately six miles off Great Wass Island, there were a huge number of small lobsters, “seed lobsters,” as he called them. “I punched as many as I can ever remember punching. I figure every day I went, I punched 40 to 60 females a day.”
While his catch was down this year, Carver isn’t alarmed. “Year to year, things change. Back in the mid-1980s we didn’t have much volume at all. Then there was a twenty-year boom and now it’s going the other way. The days of 1,000-pound hauls are behind us.”
He is concerned about the impact of the gradual decline in the lobster population combined with the planned increase in the minimum legal size, due to be implemented in July.
“It could be hard for the younger guys. They estimate [with the gauge change] the catch will be down by 10%. And then there could be another 10% drop because of Mother Nature. I think if you can get through the next three years, things will straighten out,” he said. “Guys are going to have to put their time in. If you go six days a week you can have a good week. You’ve got to get up and go to work. It’s fishing.”
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