Lobsters may be disappearing from the waters south of Cape Cod, but this 31-pound monster was hauled ashore off Race Point in Provincetown last month by a skin diver. After July meeting in Warwick RI of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), there might not have any lobster at all as this fifteen-state commission decides whether to recommend a five-year moratorium on all lobstering in the Southern New England district which includes all the state-owned waters from south of Cape Cod to North Carolina.
The Massachusetts lobster industry was struggling because of warming waters which affect a lobster’s health and makes them more susceptible to disease. As a result the lobsters have been migrating away from Nantucket Sound, Buzzards Bay, Rhode Island and Long Island Sounds for the last several years and heading farther out to sea. Now, to make matters even worse for local lobstermen, a committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which sets fishing regulations recommendations in the 15 state region, calls the southern New England lobster population “critically depleted” and adds that “continued fishing pressure reduces the stock’s potential to rebuild.”
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is a commission of U.S. eastern seaboard states formed to coordinate and manage fishery resources. Now lobster fishermen groups from The Vineyard and the Connecticut and Long Island Lobstermen’s Association oppose the plan as well. All this is a long cry for a day only four years ago when a crowd of well-wishers gathered at Manomet Point in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to see off a new friend as he journeyed back home.
