Evaluating the effectiveness of Gulf of Maine lobster fishery resource monitoring programs under different climate change scenarios
Principal Investigator: Yong Chen (Department Marine Resources, UMaine)
Partners: Maine Department of Marine Resources Larry Jacobson (NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center), Richard Wahle (School of Marine Sciences, UMaine), Andrew Pershing (Gulf of Maine Research Institute)
Abstract: American lobster in the Gulf of Maine supports the most valuable fisheries in the USA and state of Maine. The spatio-temporal distribution of lobster population and landings has shown large changes over the last three decades and is projected to continue changing, which may result in large impacts on the performance of current monitoring programs that provide critical information for the assessment and management of lobster stock in the Gulf of Maine. This study is designed to evaluate the performance of the key lobster monitoring programs in the changing Gulf of Maine. The information derived in this study will provide critical information for developing a full proposal for improving lobster monitoring programs for the NOAA and State of Maine in a changing Gulf of Maine.