Warm up your summer feasts before warm water reaches your kitchen

A bountiful harvest of delicious fruits and vegetables captivates menus every summer, but in New England, seafood wears the crown, and the crown jewel is lobster. But like everything else on Earth, rising temperatures are threatening the abundance of these resources, just as lobstering season is only weeks away.

A warming planet is wreaking havoc on the complex interconnected web of marine life. The Copernicus Climate Change Agency, whose climate research is supported by the European Union, reported this month that “ocean temperatures have been at unprecedentedly warm levels for more than 12 months,” and the average global ocean surface in March Temperatures reached historic highs of 21.07 degrees Celsius and 69.92 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just as climate has long stressed human populations and prompted migration, ocean populations are also under stress and seeking survivable climates. In New England, scientists and lobstermen alike study and live its effects. The focus is broadly on the Gulf of Maine, which stretches from Cape Cod in Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, Canada. David Reidmiller, director of the Climate Center at the Gulf of Maine Research Center in Portland, Maine, found that ocean warming in the Gulf of Maine is three times the global average and “faster than 95 percent of the world's oceans.” ” In 2021, the Gulf of Maine experienced a full calendar year marine heatwave for the first time.

Maine's lobster catch in 2023 was 93.7 million pounds, a record since 2009 and down more than 5% from 2022, according to a report from the Maine Department of Marine Resources. Compare that 2023 number to the most recent peak in Maine's lobster catch. In 2016, he weighed in at 132.6 pounds, which shows how important that is in Maine.

Robert Steneck is a professor of marine ecology and biology in the University of Maine's Department of Marine Sciences. He says calculating the state's lobster catch in one day is cause for concern. “Lobster accounts for 75% to 80% of the total fishery value taken from Maine waters. It's easy to fall into a 'golden trap' like this,” Steneck says. “Fisheries managers and society feel comfortable exploiting high-value fisheries without properly considering the risks involved when dealing with lucrative monocultures. But we don't have a worthwhile Plan B.'' Oysters, scallops and clams are second only to lobster in terms of economic value to the state, but far behind it.

Compounding the concerns of warming oceans, rising tides, and the severe storms that devastated docks along the coast just this winter, another species that is also on the move: an endangered species. Monitoring right whales has become an environmental imperative. Dr. Joshua Reed, a biologist and right whale expert, wrote this before the beginning of large-scale whaling in the 18th and 19th centuries.^th Over the centuries, there may have been as many as 10,000 North Atlantic right whales. Fewer than 360 are currently known to exist. And in Reed's case, fishing line entanglement, trauma from injury, infection from fishing line skin wounds, and the harmful drag of fishing gear pulled by these giant marine mammals are directly linked to this significant loss. .

But Steneck has been studying what right whales and lobsters eat, and how rising water temperatures are affecting their food sources. He believes it has a broader and more important impact. He focused on zooplankton and small crustaceans, a group of copepods. Called Calanus finmarchicus, it is rich in lipids and is a powerful nutritional source for right whales, especially useful in strengthening females for breeding. Rising water temperatures are causing copepod populations to decline in the Gulf of Maine, Steneck said. And it's two important changes in air currents that highlight the effects of global warming, he says.

The Labrador Current and the Gulf Stream collide right off the coast of Maine. “The Gulf Stream is warm, salty, critically nutrient poor, and is on the rise in the Gulf of Maine,” Steneck said. It is indeed warming the Gulf of Maine, but it is also depleting the Gulf of Maine of critical nutrients that nourish this once-burgeoning ecosystem. And just as the Gulf Stream's influence is increasing, so too is the Labrador Current's influence. And what we're seeing is that instead of the Labrador Current coming down into the Gulf of Maine and going around, it's being deflected eastward, toward Europe. ”

But the pressure is on for lobstermen to switch gears and change lines to materials that migrating whales can easily break through without traps or entanglements. And that's what lobster operators around the Gulf of Maine face heading into an economically viable season.

Tim Alley has been lobstering in Maine's coastal waters for 40 years. “In recent years, there has been a trend related to temperature,” he says. “These lobsters typically migrate to the coast and then come back in the fall, but they don't seem to migrate like they used to. and the temperature at the bottom.

Alley is steeped in the traditions of his home state's largest industry, most recently starring in the 1972 short film Alone in My Lobster, which he starred in at the age of 12, filmed in South Bristol and New Harbor, Maine.・Finished filming for “Boat.'' Like most lobstermen, he would call himself an environmentalist. Lobstermen live on, from, and thrive on water. But they reject the idea that the right whale species is in decline because of them. In more than 40 years, he says, he has only seen one right whale. New England lobstermen say not enough is being said about line from boat strikes and other fishing methods.

Ally said regulatory changes are expensive and time-consuming. “We used to use floating lines between the rigs to keep the line from getting caught on the bottom when fishing two, three, four or more rigs together. It should be marked with a zone-specific color, so if the rope gets tangled, you can tell where it came from.”

“It's the hardest pill to swallow to ask fishermen to solve a problem they're not involved in,” Alley said. “If there was evidence that we were harming these whales, most fishermen would agree to do everything they could, because we all love watching whales. “It's amazing! One of the reasons we love fishing is to see this stuff.''

Steneck understands the frustration. In his view, “Even if we removed all the lobster traps in the Gulf of Maine, the right whale population would not fundamentally change, because much of it is driven by nutrition, and right whales are over 60 years old. It is possible that the lobster has become entangled in it at some point over the past 60 years. However, the number of observations of right whale entanglement is relatively low.

Like other lobstermen, Alley tries to stay positive about his lobster supply. But looking out the window of Steneck's waterfront home in South Bristol, Maine, Alley says, I'm sitting here looking at the Damariscotta River. 17 years ago I had a lot of equipment there. I haven't fished with traps there since then because the lobster migration has changed and I have changed with it. ”