Lobsters move north as Atlantic warms

PORTLAND, Maine – The lobster population has crashed to the lowest level on record in southern New England while climbing to heights never before seen in the cold waters off Maine and other northern reaches – a geographic shift scientists attribute in large part to the warming of the ocean.

The trend is driving lobstermen in Connecticut and Rhode Island out of business.

Restaurant diners, supermarket shoppers and vacationers aren’t seeing much difference in price or availability, since the overall supply of lobsters is steady.

But because of the importance of lobsters to New England’s economy, history and identity, the northward shift stands as a particularly sad example of how climate change may be altering the range of animals and plants.

“It’s a shame,” said Jason McNamee, chief of marine resource management for Rhode Island’s Division of Fish and Wildlife.

In 2013, the number of adult lobsters in New England south of Cape Cod slid to about 10 million, just one-fifth the total in the late 1990s, according to a report issued this month by regulators.

The declines are “largely in response to adverse environmental conditions, including increasing water temperatures over the last 15 years,” along with continued fishing, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said in a summary of the report.

In northern New England, meanwhile, lobsters are booming.

Maine fishermen caught more than 100 million pounds of lobster the past four years, the highest four-year haul in state history.

“It very much looks like what you would expect from a species that is responding to a warming ocean: It’s going to move toward the poles,” said Andy Pershing, chief scientific officer for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute of Portland, Maine.