FILE - Lobsters sit in a crate at a shipping facility on Nov. 18, 2020, in Arundel, Maine. – Gerry Cushman has seen Maine's iconic lobster industry survive numerous threats in his three decades on the water, but the latest challenge — which might sound tiny — could be the biggest one yet.. Fishing regulators are instituting a new rule that lobster fishermen must abide by stricter minimum sizes for crustaceans they harvest.The impending change might be only 1/16th of an inch or 1.
But recent surveys have shown a decline in baby lobsters off Maine, and regulators with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission say that could foreshadow a decline in catch. The minimum size change applies to the Gulf of Maine, a piece of ocean off New England that's one of the most important lobster fishing grounds in the world. Under commission rules, the legal harvesting size for lobsters would change there if the young lobster stock in the gulf dropped by 35%.when comparing 2020-22 to 2016-18. That surprised both regulators and fishermen, and led many fishermen to question the accuracy of the commission's data.
The changes do not apply in Canada, which has an even larger lobster fishing industry than the U.S. Some fishing grounds there already allow smaller lobsters to be caught than U.S. rules allow.This month, the Atlantic States commission approved new rules to prevent the U.S. from importing sub-legal lobsters from Canada.
The changes will likely have a major impact on the lobster industry but might not trickle down to U.S. consumers, said John Sackton, a longtime seafood industry analyst. Prices this summer have been down compared to recent years, according to trade data. Whether that continues depends in part on how large the catch is for the rest of the year, Sackton said.