Catch Shares? – Researchers Fear Industrialization of Maine Lobster Fleet
Unlike most fisheries in the world, the lobster industry is actually experiencing an unprecedented boom despite centuries of sustained harvesting. Last year, the lobster catch was a record 130 million pounds, marking the fifth straight year the annual catch went over 120 million pounds, and over six times more than the long-term average for the state. The recent lobster boom, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, is likely primarily due to warmer ocean temperatures as younger lobsters are reaching sexual maturity faster in warmer waters. But it’s also because, unlike the ground fishery, the state long ago took a proactive approach to conserving the resource. “There are some interesting differences between those two fisheries in terms of the regulations we put in place very early on in the lobster fishery,” said fisheries researcher Patrick Shepard at the Penobscot Marine Museum’s “Our Evolving Fisheries History Conference” in Belfast on April 8, “but there are also some interesting parallels to what might be happening as far as technological advances.” click here to read the article 13:49
Fantastic. Some marginally-employed midwit wannabe hack that NOAA didn’t want is trying to generate jobs for himself and his girlfriends by attempting to generate a crisis where none exists. Lobster populations rise and fall regardless of the bloviations of soft-handed manlets.
I love the part where he gives financial professionals ‘advice’ on how to do their job. I thought he was a ‘fisheries researcher?’ Talented dude. One of my neighbors had to get an MBA from the Wharton School in order to be a loan officer in a bank. Guess they teach that stuff in biology classes now.