In October 2024 the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) voted to delay an increase to the minimum legal size of lobsters to 3 5/16” in LCMA 1 until July 1, 2025. This is the third time the Commission has delayed the increase, mandated by Addendum 27 to its lobster management plan. On July 1, 2027, the minimum size is scheduled to increase again, to 3 3/8”.
According to ASMFC, Addendum 27 was adopted as a proactive measure to protect lobster spawning stock and increase resilience of the stock as the Gulf of Maine environment changes. We posed your questions about the gauge increase and its conservation value to Department of Marine Resources (DMR) lobster scientist Kathleen Reardon.
What caused the gauge change?
Since May 2023, ASFMC’s lobster management plan requires management measures to be put in place if there’s a 35% or greater decline in lobsters just below legal size, based on three years of ventless trap and inshore trawl surveys from Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In October 2023, the ASMFC Lobster Technical Committee revealed that surveys showed a 39% decline in small lobsters using data through 2022, triggering implementation of the gauge increase in LCMA 1. In 2024, the trigger index was updated and showed a 44% decline from the last stock assessment using data through 2023.
Why does Addendum 27 focus so much on gauge and vent size changes?
The ASMFC’s Lobster Technical Committee looked at different ways to protect the lobster spawning stock. Those included changes to both the minimum and maximum gauge size, trap reductions, seasons, and quotas for the Gulf of Maine, Outer Cape Cod, and Georges Bank Lobster Management Areas. For Area 1, changing the minimum size was determined to have the greatest positive biological impact on the lobster population with the least negative economic impact to the fishery, if implemented incrementally. The positive impact comes because currently the fishery is harvesting lobsters before more than 50% have the opportunity to reproduce.
Lobstermen say they see lots of juveniles on the bottom and in places where they used to be scarce. How can the number of small lobsters be down so much?
The survey data agree that there are still many sublegal lobsters in the Gulf of Maine compared to 20-30 years ago, but the numbers of shorts have gone down in recent years. When you compare the survey numbers to the last three years of the assessment (2016-2018), they show a significant decline. One theory is that the survivability of small lobsters has decreased, leading to fewer sublegal lobsters. Rather than repeating waiting until lobster landings fall sharply before taking action as happened in Southern New England, ASFMC’s lobster management plan proactively seeks to reduce the risk of a serious decline in the Gulf of Maine by building a greater buffer in the form of protecting more eggers.
The 2023 American Lobster Settlement Index indicates that more young lobsters are settling throughout the Gulf again. Why do we need to worry?
After 10 years of DMR’s settlement survey detecting relatively low numbers of young-of the-year lobsters settling to the bottom, the 2023 numbers were up. This coincided with warm temperatures, algal blooms, and high rainfall. We don’t know what conditions will be in the years ahead. We could have more years like 2023 or it could be like the 2010s, which were not as favorable for lobster survival. By changing the minimum size while lobster abundance is still high, the ASMFC seeks to create a buffer during the good years in order to sustain the fishery in years when the conditions are less favorable.
Isn’t DMR’s data skewed because it’s not surveying the areas where lobstermen are finding juvenile lobsters?
In response to concerns from lobstermen that small lobsters may be missed by surveys, DMR is expanding data collection. Previously, the commercial sea sampling program completed three trips per zone per month wherever fishermen were fishing. Starting in September 2024, DMR began targeting four trips split evenly between state and federal waters in each zone monthly from May through November. In 2025, DMR will pilot a new collaborative program with a small number of lobstermen who will be given tablets to collect and enter lobster data themselves from their traps and from experimental ventless traps hauled with commercial trawls in federal waters. We plan to track these data into the future, compare to existing datasets, and hope our data will better inform offshore lobster dynamics.
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