Addressing Emergent Threats to the Maine Lobster Fishery Through an Expanded and Improved Model Co-Developed by Lobster Harvesters

Principal Investigator: Esperanza Stancioff (UMaine Extension, Sea Grant, UMaine)

Partners: Samuel Belknap (Climate Change Institute, Anthropology, UMaine); Aaron Strong (Marine Science, UMaine)

Abstract: Maine’s iconic lobster fishery, providing 81% of Maine’s marine resource income (DMR 2015), faces the dual threats of an aging generation of lobstermen and a rapidly changing Gulf of Maine. Building on recent work that brought together lobster harvesters, researchers, and managers to develop climate change scenarios to help improve management actions, we propose to convene a multi-stakeholder workshop to further expand develop and refine a community based system dynamics (CBSD) computer model that addresses these two threats to the Maine lobster fishery. Specifically, our workshop will form a new leadership collaborative for CBSD model expansion and development focused on increasing the flexibility in the fishery. The results of this workshop would form the basis of two proposals: NOAA’s Fisheries S-K 2017 and Climate Program Office: 2017 Understanding Climate Impacts on Fish Stocks and Fisheries.