There aren’t too many fisheries that continue throughout the year. Many are restricted to the summer months, while others like scalloping only happen in the winter. But there are a few that keep going despite the drastic shifts in weather that happen between seasons. Fortunately, one of those is the state’s most valuable fishery – lobster.
Lobsters are some amazingly hardy creatures. I had the pleasure of studying them in graduate school and doing some pretty torturous things to them, only to watch them continue to survive and thrive afterward in our laboratory tanks. They can regrow legs and claws if one is lost in battle, and they can survive out of water for a few days. That’s crucial to our ability to ship live lobsters across the world.
They are also able to stay in Maine waters year-round. Birds fly south and many marine mammals swim to warmer waters, but lobsters are among the ocean creatures that stick around. They are a bit harder to catch in the winter, however. That’s because instead of migrating south, they migrate vertically. Ocean water in the winter undergoes a temperature reversal. In the summer, the surface water is warmer because the surrounding warm air warms it. This leaves the deep water a steady, cool temperature. In the winter, however, the air temperature is cold and thus cools the surface water. That means that in the winter it is the bottom water that is actually the warmest. That’s where the lobsters go.
Because coastal waters are shallow, in order to go deeper, lobsters have to move further offshore. In order to catch them, the fishermen have to go further offshore as well. As you might imagine, you can’t fish in the winter with just any fishing gear. These boats tend to be both longer and wider to be more stable in rough seas. They also have larger enclosed cabins to protect the captain and his crew a bit more.
Some of these boats even go out beyond the state boundary line, which is three miles from shore, to fish in federal waters. This requires a different permit that is issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Boats in the federal fishery fish as far south as New Jersey. The boats can be around 70 feet long. They typically use trawls of 15-20 traps all connected together with a buoy marking their location at either end. The traps are usually larger than inshore traps and are quite heavy.
Plenty of boats, however, stay in state waters and fish through the winter. Right after college, I had a unique opportunity to track the seasonal movements of lobsters within Casco Bay. I worked with students on several islands to tag lobsters on several boats. We plotted where they were caught on a chart and then put out the word to the fishing fleet to look for the tags. When they caught one, they would call it in and we plotted its catch location on the chart. Then, we could measure the distance it traveled and also see what the depth was in both locations. It was concrete confirmation that lobsters in Casco Bay moved to deeper waters as the temperatures cooled.
So, while the lobstering activity isn’t quite so high this time of year, there are plenty of people going out on the water whenever the weather permits. It is a resource we can appreciate year-round for our economy and our appetites.
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