Global Warming and Lobsters

Here is a perfect follow-up on last week’s blog of Global Warming and Wine.

Clearly, global warming will not only drive vineyard northward, but also lobsters. And it is happening now as animals can move freely.

[The following is from Reuter’s special report on The Great Lobster Rush]

Lobster industry was a nautical gold rush. Two generations ago, the entire New England coast had a thriving lobster industry.

Today, lobster catches have collapsed in southern New England, and the only state with a significant harvest is north in Maine, where the seafood practically synonymous with the state has exploded.

Now lobsters keep running to the north and going deeper in the water. Maine might be in trouble after another 5-15 years.

That’s happening not only to lobster, but literally to all marine species.

In the U.S. North Atlantic, fisheries data show that at least 85 percent of the nearly 70 federally tracked species have shifted north or deeper, or both, in recent years when compared to the norm over the past half-century. And the most dramatic of species shifts have occurred in the last 10 or 15 years.

Similar findings in a map of predicted migration – marine species are moving northward to colder waters.

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Read more on:

• Projecting shifts in thermal habitat for 686 species on the North American continental shelf
• Preparing ocean governance for species on the move
• American lobsters feeling the heat in the northwest Atlantic