Bust and Then Boom in the Maine Lobster Industry: Perspectives of Fishers and Biologists

Abstract

Abstract The Maine industry for American lobster Homarus americanus has gone from a period of very low catches in the 1920s and 1930s (“the bust”) to a period of “boom” marked by record high catches in the 1990s. Fishers and biologists working for state and federal agencies emphasize different variables in explaining the bust and the boom. What they see as the facts have strong implications for the management of the fishery. Both fishers and biologists believe that a combination of fishing practices and environmental variables have caused the changes in lobster catches observed. However, biologists tend to emphasize the importance of fishing effort and water temperature. Fishers believe that lobster populations have been strongly affected by the way people fish (i.e., by the amount of illegal activity, by restrictions on size and taking of breeding females, etc.), and environmental factors, including predation on lobsters by groundfish, changes in habitat, and what they term “natural cycles.” As a result,...