Tag Archives: baby lobsters

Rock lobster counting continues a 55-year project that reliably predicts its $240 million per year future

A program recording baby lobster numbers along the WA coast has been running since 1968, creating an invaluable data set. It allows scientists to reliably predict the health of the $240 million per year rock lobster industry into the future. Researchers continue to haul puerulus counters out of the water at nine sites along the coast every month. Fishing is a game of risk and reward the world over, but off the Western Australian coast the odds of a good catch are stacked in crayfishers’ favour. The $240 million per year western rock lobster industry, WA’s most valuable fishery, which was worth as much as $400m pre-COVID — has the unique ability to predict its catch four years into the future, all thanks to the work of a curious scientist more than 55 years ago. photos, more, >>click to read<< 19:34

“It’s always excitement”- Baby lobster numbers point to healthy future for P.E.I. fishery

A cage filled with rocks on the ocean floor seems like a strange place for a nursery, but for baby lobsters, it’s the ideal place to grow — and it’s how the Prince Edward Island Fisherman’s Association (PEIFA) works to study and predict the health of Island lobster stocks. For nine years now the PEIFA, with support from the province and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), has been putting 30 collectors — mesh-bottom cages filled with rocks — at seven sites around P.E.I., to attract baby lobsters and learn from them. Photo’s, >click to read<

Baby lobsters nurtured in Northumberland to boost life chances

Baby lobsters are being nurtured in Northumberland to improve their chances of making it to adulthood. Female lobsters are brought to the Northumberland Seafood Centre’s Hatchery, where their eggs are carefully packaged and preserved in sea-like conditions.  After they’ve been given time to develop the eggs are taken on board a conservation boat. The boat then takes them out to sea and lays them on the sea bed.  photo’s click here to read the story 10:14

A mystery is born: Where are all the baby lobsters?

Biologists and lobstermen are growing increasingly worried that the state’s most valuable fishery, which in recent years has boasted record volume and value and accounts for more than 80 percent of Maine’s fishing profit, is about to go bust, a doomsday economic scenario some call the curse of the “gilded trap.” At the center of their concern: The number of baby lobsters found in the Gulf of Maine continues to fall. “We call it the great disconnect,” said Joshua Carloni, New Hampshire’s state lobster biologist. “And as you can imagine, it has us concerned.”,,,  The Seabrook tows found a decline in copepods – tiny planktonic crustaceans that are most likely a staple of the lobster larval diet click here to read the story 08:14

Fish in the Northwest Atlantic Are Going Hungry – New Science From Maine’s Department of Marine Resources Helps To Explain Why. click here to read the article