If you can provide any proof to back up that catastrophic forecast, you will be the first. The woman who popularized that unsubstantiated theory, Penny Overton, was shortly thereafter removed by the Portland Press Herald from her post as their lobster reporter. She and her co-authors torched their chances of ever getting another interview from anyone in fishing communities in Maine ever again by drastically contorting the facts to shoehorn their subjects into the desired pre-fab mold for PPH's prestige piece "The Lobster Trap". While the story did get the expected accolades and wide traction by virtue of checking all of the boxes for Climate Journalism Award Bait, the takeaways that were laboriously spoon-fed to the readers carry no credibility for anyone with a shred of tangible expertise on lobsters. Lobsters love warmer water temperatures. It speeds up their reproduction cycle so that they actually reproduce more. As the Gulf of Maine warmed over the last few decades, conditions have only become more favorable for lobsters. It is highly likely that if areas south of Area 1 had employed the strict zero-tolerance conservation measures on protecting the most productive lobsters, lobsters would not have dropped off so much in those regions. But check the numbers, Maine's doing great. For all of the breathless yearning of climate ideologues in Maine to spin the yarn that climate change is threatening Maine's most iconic seafood resource, the inconvenient truth is that lobsters are one species that have been proven to thrive when their habitat is not utterly ice-cold. The cooling water temps of 2022 and 2023 in relation to the previous decade definitely slowed lobsters down a little bit, but the resource is in great shape. We've also got the continued pressure in the grey zone from our neighbors to the north who do not have the same conservation rules as we do, have pushed further and further in and do continue to deplete the Maine-protected brood stock. That challenge is many orders of magnitude more concerning than the recent temperature dip in the Gulf of Maine. (Don't believe me? Take a look at the last decade of Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly data...for much of the past two years, the Gulf of Maine was actually one of the FASTEST-COOLING bodies of water in the world, compared to the peak highs that were achieved during the 2010's, which were banner years for the health of the Maine lobster resource. June and July last summer were crazy cold for GoM water temps, probably because of the enormity of rain. But the water warmed up more to normal by August and the catch picked up.) If we do, as you say, receive a few degrees of warming in the Gulf of Maine in the next season or two, the temperature will once again have returned to the range that we had stellar growth of the population in during the previous decade. There are reasons to be apprehensive about the extent of the warming of the oceans. The availability of the Maine Lobster is not one of them. Ironically, they are one of the species who benefit the most from oceanic warming. If I have seemed excessively snarky in this reply, my apologies. You may have not meant your comment in the way that I presume is likely the correct interpretation of it (which is to use a cartoonish exaggeration of the effects of climate change as a hand-wave dismissing the most immediate and pressing threats to our fisheries, which remain unfounded regulatory overreach from fishery management on the one hand, and a lack of regulatory accountability for certain big businesses in the energy sector that are on the verge of absorbing and polluting our fishing grounds on the other hand). The point you are making is one that I have heard ad nauseum for the last 2+ years, and always from people who do not have even a fraction of the granular info on lobsters OR water temps. If you meant your comment in a more charitable way, then I encourage you to check out a video that will be released this month from the New England Fishermen's Stewardship association in which a couple of scientists address the facts about lobsters and their relationship with warmer water temps in the Gulf of Maine. It's pretty interesting.

Well said and I sure hope you are right. I am a participant in the lobster fishery here on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick. Our catches have been increasing the last 10 years or so as well. I guess I am just direly afraid of this fishery disappearing because it’s mainly all we have left here. And like you said a lot of it does indeed have to do with our similar conversation methods which have been in place as long as I can remember and certainly since I started fishing . The boats have gotten bigger and so have the payments , fuel, bait, inspections, insurance.. Hate to think what would happen if it all disappeared. Now should we have another conversation about the Gray Zone? Just kidding!!!! Be safe out there. 🇨🇦🦞🇨🇦

I guess my worse case assumption is based on the Crab disappearing out west in the Bering Sea. That and the fact I was completely unaware of the lack of conservation to the south of you guys. Very informative… thks 🇨🇦🦞🇨🇦

All good questions. I hope someone can give an answer. Thanks for asking.

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