Baby Lobsters Get a Head Start at Sea

A baby lobster is born into a pretty tough world. After riding securely on a female lobster’s abdomen for many months, the fertilized egg is unceremoniously dumped into the Gulf of Maine to fend for itself.

Except it can’t. For many weeks the tiny egg simply floats with the wind and currents. If it’s not eaten during that time by, well, you name it, it will molt four times during its wanderings. After its fourth molt, the miniature lobster attempts to settle on the seafloor, hoping for a secure and nutrient-rich environment to grow in. It will need a lot of luck. Only about 1% of eggs released into the Gulf will survive to become legal sized lobsters.

Young lobsters face a hostile world during their first months of life. CBC photo.

Larval lobsters can be raised in hatcheries where their chances of survival from egg to their fourth molt are much higher. These lobsters can also be released to the wild, but there is no easy way to know if they survive. Any small advantage the lobster gets at this stage might increase its chances to make it to adulthood. The Lobster Institute at the University of Maine sees an opportunity in this period to assist future lobster stocks and Maine lobstermen as well.

The Institute is experimenting with a new way to help hatchery-reared larval lobsters survive those perilous few months after their fourth molt (Stage IV) when they are prey to nearly every creature along the seafloor. Institute staff and two summer interns have created Nursery Enclosures for Standard Traps (NEST), small boxes that can be attached to lobster traps in which lab-reared stage IV larval lobsters can reside for several months before being released into the wild.

“I think of them as ocean-worthy pill boxes,” said Chris Cash, executive director of the Lobster Institute and leader of the project. The goal is to give these tiny lobsters a protected place to feed, grow, and build strength before making the plunge to the seafloor. “It’s well known that lab-reared lobsters aren’t as hardy as wild ones,” Cash said. “We’re trying to give them a chance to develop some of that hardiness before they face the challenges of life on the bottom.”

Lobstermen and resource managers alike are considering different ways to bolster the Gulf’s lobster population, which the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s recent stock assessment found has declined roughly 34% from peak levels in 2018.

Cash drew on the innovative work of Brian Beal, founder of the Downeast Institute in Beals Island, who has cultivated larval lobsters for many years and tested ways to help them survive as newly settled juveniles. She and her interns designed a receptacle perforated with tiny holes and then created the boxes with a 3-D printer. They asked Beal and Hood College marine biologist Eric Annis for their thoughts on the design, then tweaked it some more.

“We got the larval lobsters from the Downeast Institute and on August 6 transferred them in the NESTs and set the traps at five and ten fathoms,” Cash said. The traps will be hauled periodically through the end of October so the lobsters can be evaluated for survival and growth.

Cash hopes that if the results from this year’s pilot run are good, the project might expand into each lobster zone. She is applying to Sea Grant’s American Lobster Initiative for funds to work with several lobstermen along the coast next year to help improve the NEST design and inform trap placement.

There are numerous ways to boost lobster populations in the Gulf of Maine. According to Cash, “NESTs are just one small way we can explore the potential of hatcheries for stock enhancement. It may not work, but it’s good to look at all the alternatives, what’s been done and what we can do in the future. This could be a little win for stock enhancement.”