As per the information Members of the Baxter’s Cove Lobster Enhancement Project are trying to establish a hatchery in Judique to improve the region’s struggling lobster industry. The project is said to have started two years ago by a group of volunteers to improve lobster fishing area 26 B from the Canso Causeway to Cape North in waters of the Northumberland Strait.
Lower prices, lower catches and high costs of fuel and bait have made the lobster industry much less profitable than it has been in the past. Judique fisherman Ian MacDonald said that there is a need to grow the industry. The group informed that the survival rates for lobster eggs in the wild are less than 0.5 per cent while in a hatchery survival is about 30 percent.
It is told that the plans for the hatchery include taking egg-bearing female lobsters from each harbour along the coast. Eggs would be hatched and larvae raised to the juvenile stage 5 before their release by fishermen, who would catch the lobsters in six to seven years after reaching a marketable size.
