PORTLAND, Maine - New restrictions are coming to southern New England's lobster fishery in an attempt to save the area's population of the crustaceans.
The population of lobsters off of Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts has declined as waters have warmed.
An arm of the interstate Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted on Tuesday to pursue new management measures to try to slow the lobster decline. Management tools will include changes to legal harvesting size, reductions to the number of traps and seasonal closures to fishing areas.
Crafting the specifics of the measures will take months. A final vote is expected in August.
The U.S. lobster fishery is mostly based in Maine, where lobster catch has reached record highs in recent years. But catch in the southern New England states has plummeted in that time.
This post was updated at 12:22 pm ET.