Multiple independent indicators of American lobster in Maine: Patterns in space and time
Date:
This was an oral presentation the at the Benthic Ecology Meeting.
Effective fisheries monitoring and sustainable management depends on designing surveys around data needs, management goals, and the life history characteristics of the species. The American lobster, being extremely valuable, has well-developed sampling programs that include fisheries-independent and -dependent surveys. We compared six of the benthic surveys (including diver, trap, and trawl surveys) which create an extensive dataset that overlaps across geographic space, time, and depth. Our analysis can link patterns that extend across lobster life stages, ontogenetic shifts, and habitat between surveys providing a broader understanding of lobster ecology and the stock than any one survey. Despite the fishery being very data-rich, lobster’s ecological characteristics, specifically behavior and habitat use, create biases due to each survey’s differences in methodology that pose challenges for interpreting underlying population scale changes from survey trends. Authors: Jarrett, R., Reardon, K., Steneck, R., Brady, D.
Ph.D. Dissertation Research at the University of Maine