Abstract
Event Abstract Back to Event Risk factors associated with soft-shelled lobsters (Homarus americanus) in southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada Krishna Thakur1*, Crawford Revie1, Jean Lavallee2 and Raphael Vanderstichel1 1 University of Prince Edward Island, Department of Health Management, Canada 2 Aquatic Science & Health Services, Canada Soft-shelled lobsters pose an economic challenge to the lobster industry due to low meat yields and survivability during holding and transportation. The objectives of this study were to describe the spatio-temporal patterns of soft-shelled lobsters in southwestern Nova Scotia, and identify environmental and lobster-related factors associated with shell quality. We used data from a monitoring project, and remotely sensed water temperatures. Mixed-effect logistic regression and time-series methods were used to analyze more than 130,000 samples collected between 2004 and 2014. The annual overall prevalence of soft-shelled lobsters ranged from 9 to 38%, and varied significantly among fishing areas. Shell quality was influenced by lobster sex and size, and in the 2-months before the fishing season, lower water temperatures (4-6 weeks prior to sampling) were associated with reduced prevalences. Strong inter-annual variability in soft-shell prevalences than predictive abilities of water temperature on shell quality, suggests that adjusting fishing seasons, arbitrarily, by few weeks in these fishing areas will not improve the shell quality of landed lobsters and the trend of increasing prevalences of soft-shelled lobsters during fishing seasons will likely continue as water temperatures are predicted to rise in the future. However, changing start date for fishing season, dynamically from year to year, depending on average water temperature profile 4-6 weeks prior will likely see a reduction in the proportion of landed soft-shelled lobsters. Further research is needed to evaluate the effects of long-term temperature and ecosystem changes on lobster health in eastern Canada. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Canada Research Chair in Aquatic Epidemiology for funding support for this study. Keywords: lobster, Soft shell, Risk factors, water temperature, Spatio-temporal patterns Conference: AquaEpi I - 2016, Oslo, Norway, 20 Sep - 22 Sep, 2016. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Aquatic Animal Epidemiology Citation: Thakur K, Revie C, Lavallee J and Vanderstichel R (2016). Risk factors associated with soft-shelled lobsters (Homarus americanus) in southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada. Front. Vet. Sci. Conference Abstract: AquaEpi I - 2016. doi: 10.3389/conf.FVETS.2016.02.00018 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 30 May 2016; Published Online: 14 Sep 2016. * Correspondence: Dr. Krishna Thakur, University of Prince Edward Island, Department of Health Management, Charlottetown, PE, Canada, thakurvet@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Krishna Thakur Crawford Revie Jean Lavallee Raphael Vanderstichel Google Krishna Thakur Crawford Revie Jean Lavallee Raphael Vanderstichel Google Scholar Krishna Thakur Crawford Revie Jean Lavallee Raphael Vanderstichel PubMed Krishna Thakur Crawford Revie Jean Lavallee Raphael Vanderstichel Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.
Highlights
The Atlantic lobster (Homarus americanus), fished across 40 managed lobster fishing areas (LFAs) in the Atlantic provinces and Québec, is one of the most important iconic seafood exports of Canada and is worth more than $1 billion (CAD) annually (Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) 2014) with sustained increases in market demands.Since the early 2000s, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of soft-shelled lobsters landed in southwest Nova Scotia (SWNS) (ASHS 2014)
We evaluated the effect of making the fishing season dynamic, depending upon water temperature profiles in preceding weeks, by choosing the week for the start of the fishing season in each study year based on a cutoff temperature, and estimated the corresponding changes in probability of soft-shelled lobsters three weeks before and three weeks after that week
The longer-term trend of increasing water temperatures in the North Atlantic together with the recent observed increases in both the abundance and size of lobsters in Canadian fishing areas make it difficult to identify a single risk factor associated with soft-shelled lobsters
Summary
The Atlantic lobster (Homarus americanus), fished across 40 managed lobster fishing areas (LFAs) in the Atlantic provinces and Québec, is one of the most important iconic seafood exports of Canada and is worth more than $1 billion (CAD) annually (Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) 2014) with sustained increases in market demands.Since the early 2000s, there has been a significant increase (from historically 5–10% to over 30–40% in recent years) in the proportion of soft-shelled lobsters landed in southwest Nova Scotia (SWNS) (ASHS 2014). Lobster shell hardness is directly related to the timing of their molting stages, a natural process whereby they shed their exoskeleton, allowing them to grow (Cobb and Phillips 2012; Howell 2012). While they molt, a new, soft shell is formed, and lobsters actively take in water to expand and stretch this soft exoskeleton (Glenn and Pugh 2006; Laufer et al 2013). Recently molted lobsters have reduced meat yield and excess water content, which is sometimes undesirable to consumers (Wang and Mcgaw 2014). In the days to weeks following molting, excess water is replaced with new tissue growth and re-mineralization of the newly formed exoskeleton, producing harder shells (Howell 2012)
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