Tag Archives: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters
Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters – The market is booming, but it’s not making anybody rich
In his famous 1968 essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” biologist Garrett Hardin singled out ocean fishing as a prime example of self-interested individuals short-sightedly depleting shared resource.,, Then there’s the Maine lobster. As University of Maine anthropologist James M. Acheson put it in his 2003 book “Capturing the Commons: Devising Institutions to Manage the Maine Lobster Industry”. Since the late 1980s, catches have been at record-high levels despite decades of intense exploitation. We have never produced so many lobsters. Even more interesting to managers is the fact that catch levels remained relatively stable from 1947 to the late 1980s. While scientists do not agree on the reason for these high catches, there is a growing consensus that they are due, in some measure, to the long history of effective regulations that the lobster industry has played a key role in developing. Click here to read the article 15:42
