Warmer Waters Have Decimated Connecticut's Lobster Fishery

http://www.courant.com/opinion/editorials/hc-ed-lobsters-decline-20150828-story.html

Aug. 31, 2015

For generations, sturdy lobstermen in small boats have put-putted out of Connecticut's harbors to set their traps and bring home the tasty if homely crustaceans. Sadly, this ancient fishery is dying out. The lobsters are gone. The waters off the southern New England coast are becoming too warm for them.

The Associated Press reports that the lobster population has crashed to the lowest levels on record in southern New England while climbing to record highs in the cold waters off Maine and other northern reaches — a shift that scientists attribute in large measure to the warming of the ocean.

Connecticut's lobster fishery has been in decline for several years. At its peak in 1998 — not that long ago — the state's commercial lobstermen landed 3.7 million (3,700,000) pounds of lobsters. By 2014, the catch was 135,000 pounds, a precipitous drop, though a tiny uptick from the 121,000 pounds taken in 2013.

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The main villain, scientists say, is climate change. The numbers bear this out. From 1976 to 2014, the temperature of Long Island Sound increased by 2.9 degrees, according to measurements taken in Niantic Bay by Dominion Nuclear Connecticut. Since 1999, the average water temperature in the summer has been at or above 68, a level that studies indicate can send lobsters into respiratory stress, a spokesman for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said.

So the lobsters are dying out here, unable to reproduce in significant numbers, but prospering in the colder northern waters. Because of that, the prices at markets and restaurants will remain stable, but few of those lobsters will come from the local fishery.

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