Will ocean warming chill lobster exports?
PORTLAND, Maine — More people outside the U.S. are enjoying the New England tradition of cracking open a freshly cooked American lobster, and that experience hinges on one thing — the lobster getting there alive.
That’s a looming problem, according to some members of the American lobster industry, who are concerned that lobsters’ shells are getting weaker. Scientific evidence about the issue paints a complicated picture.
U.S. lobster exports to Asian countries have increased exponentially this decade, and American shippers prefer lobsters with hard, sturdy shells to survive the long journey to places such as Beijing and Seoul.
But some members of U.S. industry have complained in recent years of poor shell quality among lobsters, most of which are plucked from the ocean off Canada and New England. They’ve raised concerns about warming ocean waters or acidification of the ocean having a negative effect on lobster shells.
Scientists said there is a correlation between higher ocean temperatures and increased shell disease, but incidence of the disease is very low off Maine, the nation’s top lobster-producing state. Lobstermen also are catching lots of lobsters in the summer, when the creatures molt and are softer. Otherwise, there isn’t much hard evidence to suggest lobster shells are weakening, scientists said.
There’s a lot of money at stake in getting lobsters to their destinations alive. American lobsters were worth a record $669.3 million at the docks in 2016, a year in which fishermen caught nearly 160 million pounds of the crustaceans.
While lobster meat is used in some processed products, such as lobster macaroni and cheese and lobster bisque, the whole live lobster is one of the biggest draws in the seafood world. It’s also the sought-after item in the booming Chinese market, which took a record of nearly 18 million pounds of U.S. lobster last year.
A lobster with a harder, sturdier shell has a better chance to live through the one- to two-day journey.
Bill Bruns, operations manager for The Lobster Co. of Arundel, Maine, said “finding and producing enough product that’s possible to ship” has become a problem.
Many lobsters live in the Gulf of Maine, which is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans. This poses many challenges to lobsters, including potential changes to their access to food and the abundance of predators.
It also raises concerns about epizootic shell disease, which disfigures lobsters to the point that they can’t be sold. The Maine Department of Marine Resources said researchers found the disease in about 1 percent of lobsters last year after almost never finding it as recently as a decade or so ago.