Study: Baby lobsters struggle to survive in warming waters
Warming ocean waters are making it difficult for baby lobsters to survive, according to a new study from scientists at the University of Maine Darling Marine Center and the East Boothbay-based Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.
The Associated Press said the scientist’s research uncovered the difficulties lobster larvae have in surviving water that is five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the temperatures usually found in the western Gulf of Maine.
An increase of five degrees is how much the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects the Gulf of Maine to warm by the year 2100, the AP reported.
“There has been a near total collapse in Rhode Island, the southern end of the fishery, and we know our waters are getting warmer,” Jesica Waller, one of the study’s authors, told the AP. “We are hoping this research can be a jumping off point for more research into how lobsters might do over the next century.”
The effects of warming waters are already being seen in southern New England fisheries, where scientists say temperature changes are contributing to the lobsters’ decline. The lobster catch south of Cape Cod fell to about 3.3 million pounds in 2013, 16 years after it peaked at about 22 million in 1997, the AP reported.
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