Maine’s lobster boom – in which landings have quintupled since 1990 – may be coming to an abrupt end, according to a new scientific study.
The study predicts landings will fall 20 percent to 40 percent in the next four to five years in much of eastern Maine, and by over 90 percent in the eastern part of Penobscot Bay, the heart of the recent lobster explosion.
“The sky is not falling, but we are returning to normal, to the levels of the late 1990s and early 2000s,” says Noah Oppenheim, the Maine-born executive director of San Francisco’s Institute for Fisheries Resources and the leader of the study published by the scientific journal Ecological Applications. “Fish buyers, fishermen, fish processors and policy makers can start thinking about where this is going to be impacting people the most.”
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Portland Press Herald
