What might Maine’s lobster fishery look like in the future?

First published in Landings, April, 2017

Mackenzie Mazur grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, within sight and sound of the ocean. She was intrigued by the relation between people and the sea and so, after high school in Massachusetts, enrolled at the University of Maine to study marine biology. Mazur, now 23, is currently a doctoral student studying under Dr. Yong Chen and Dr. Teresa Johnson. Her research focus is the effects of changes in fishing behavior and climate on the Maine lobster fishery.

“The lobster fishery is experiencing changing water temperatures, lower proportions of V-notched female lobsters, and high fishing effort, yet it remains unclear how these changes will affect the fishery,” Mazur said. To figure out the answer to such a complex question she is using a computer model developed by previous Ph.D. student Jui-Han Chang to simulate the lobster fishery which can incorporate variations in fishing activity and lobster behavior.

“We don’t know what to expect in the future,” Mazur explained. “This is an exploratory tool to look at the dynamics of the industry.” In the computer model, each individual lobster is given a certain probability of successfully passing through each stage of its life history. The model incorporates data from the newest Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission’s lobster stock assessment, released in 2016, to account for environmental and commercial fishing processes, such as molting, bearing eggs, dying from natural causes, being caught or V-notched, and protected from harvest due to size.

“In the simulator, each process can be manipulated individually to see how one process can affect the whole fishery,” Mazur said. While the model does not include changes in water temperature, those changes are reflected in different life processes plugged into the computer program, such as an increased rate of growth to legal size due to warmer water. “I am also interviewing lobstermen to learn more about how they have dealt with changes in the fishery over the years,” Mazur added.

By tweaking different variables, such as an increase in predation or V-notching rates, Mazur hopes to explore what Maine’s lobster fishery may look like in the future. “I will simulate different fishing effort levels and estimate the profitability of those different fishing effort levels as well,” she explained. “My hope is that these simulations can be used as a tool for exploring the effects of potential social and ecological change and to prepare for the future in the fishery.”

Mazur plans to have preliminary results of her research available to share with lobstermen within the year and to complete her degree in two years. “I’m very excited to see what the results might be,” she said.