For the first time, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has issued an assessment that finds that overfishing is occurring in the lobster stock in Northern New England waters. And regulators are recommending a re-evaluation of management strategies for the lucrative resource.
Most of the lobsters Americans eat are caught in the Gulf of Maine, and Maine’s lobster fishery is one of the most valuable seafood industries in the country. But there are more signals that the fishery is changing, fast.
Tracy Pugh, a fisheries biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the chair of the Commission’s technical committee, presented the results of the new 2025 lobster stock assessment to the American Lobster Management Board this week in Delaware.
And she says according to their models, the abundance of lobsters in the Gulf of Maine and George’s Bank area has declined 34% since its peak in 2018, and is now approaching levels last seen around fifteen years ago.
Since the average abundance of lobsters remains above the “limit” at which the stock is considered able to replenish itself, Pugh explained that the combined Gulf of Maine/George’s Bank stock is not depleted.
The assessment also looks at the "exploitation rate," or the portion of the lobster population that’s removed every year.
For a while, that rate has been relatively stable. Patrice McCarron, the president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, says when a lobster reaches the legal harvest size, Maine lobstermen are efficient at catching them.
"We are very good at getting those in our traps and bringing those to market. And that has not changed," McCarron said. "That was the situation 30 years ago, 25 years ago, 10 years ago.
But with the recent and rapid decline in population abundance, Pugh says that harvest rates are now hovering right above the "exploitation threshold" that’s considered sustainable.
"But just barely," Pugh said. "So technically, overfishing is occurring in the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank stock."
That’s a warning sign for a resource that until a few years ago was on a major upward trend and charting historic highs.
But the marginal level of overfishing detected didn’t prompt immediate regulatory action.
Instead, the fisheries commission is recommending that the Lobster Board re-evaluate its management strategies to prevent further declines.
"Now is the time to start having the conversations about: what are our tools? How do we stay there?," Pugh said. "And I think that that's where the management strategy recommendation that we're making comes into play here, is the process they're discussing with the fleet, discussing with the policymakers, about what are our tools? What are our goals here? What do we want this to look like? And how do we get there?"
In a statement, Commissioner Carl Wilson, the head of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, said the agency will "continue to engage the lobster industry in discussions about the future of the fishery". And that he's confident in industry's commitment to conserve the resource.
McCarron, with the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said the results of the new stock assessment didn’t come as a surprise. She said the industry has anticipated that the nonstop growth of the Gulf of Maine population couldn’t last forever, and it's clear environmental conditions are evolving.
She said Maine's lobster fishermen recognize that new conservation measures might be needed to protect the resource that sustains thousands of livelihoods and is the backbone of many coastal communities.
Earlier this year, Maine lobstermen loudly rejected a proposed rule that would have increased the minimum legal size of lobster, and it was ultimately withdrawn.
But, McCarron said, "Things are changing. We need to go out and have that conversation. What we don't want is for the managers to decide if something needs to happen, to say, ‘Here’s the tool that you're going to use'. Of all the things we can do, they said, 'You're going to do a gauge increase'. And the industry didn't have input on choosing that tool. And I think that's what really went wrong in the last conversation; the managers decided, and then the industry responded."
DMR officials say they plan to discuss the findings of the 2025 stock assessment with fishermen at the next round of Lobster Zone council meetings.
