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outboard skiff stranded
Friendship Long Island, Me. -- Direct sunlight is setting, an icy wind has found off the ocean, along
with the tide has gone out, leaving the minnkota skiff stranded about the shore of this nearly
deserted island.
Here is the moment that Diane Cowan has awaited. Wearing tall rubber boots, she wades in the
shallows, overturning rocks and small boulders, her breath visible inside the fading light.
Quick as lightning she grabs at something flapping within the water. "Got one! Before opening her
rubber-gloved hands to show her catch, " she exclaims.
Cradled in their hand is really a tiny American lobster -- merely a four inches long, its antennae
flicking with curiosity, its claws thrashing about in protest. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you," she says
before placing it in a plastic container. Nearby, other tiny juvenile lobsters scrabble or rest in similar
dishes until Ms. Cowan can tag and measure them. None is beyond her hand.
Until recently, few lobster scientists knew that Maine's rocky tidal shores served as nurseries for
many juvenile lobsters. Now, Ms. founder, Cowan and president from the Lobster Conservancy, a
nonprofit research organization in Friendship, Me., is counting, tagging, and tracking the little
crustaceans, collecting data that may help scientists better predict trends in Maine's lobster stocks.
The information can also solve unknown in regards to the delectable shellfish that is central to
people who harvest them.
Scientists happen to be baffled in the steady surge in catches of American, or "Maine" lobsters over
the past 15 years, which occurred whilst they warned of a decline. While increasing fishing
pressures destroyed New England's stocks of halibut, haddock and cod and sea urchins -- and
increasingly more fishermen have turned to lobstering -- lobster stocks have not only stood up, they
appear to have risen.
A year ago, Maine's lobster catch soared to an additional record high, regardless that Gulf of Maine
lobster stocks happen to be officially considered overfished for nearly two decades. Maine
lobstermen landed 52.3 million pounds of lobster in 1999, compared to 47 million pounds in 1998
and typical catches of 20 million pounds in the half-century ending in 1985. "Whenever the scientists
say the stock is about to collapse, we have seen a. Fire could spread rapidly
on a boat, even upon water.
Alarms and detectors can
help keep the crew safe.groan [of frustration] in the industry," says James A. Wilson, professor of
marine science at the University of Maine at Orono. "Clearly, the model these are using is just not
one who hits the nail about the head."
The approach which has proved so off-target will depend on the size and quantity of lobsters landed
by fishermen. Such data in recent decades have frightened fishery managers because around 90
percent of lobsters caught in Maine have just reached their legal size limit and so are unlikely to
obtain bred. Barbecues shouldn?t be employed

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on boats - hot charcoal provides off
dangerous levels of CO and
blown embers could set the boat
alight.
? Preserve cabin ventilation clear in order to
prevent a develop -up involving toxic CO.
? try to maintain fabrics away from
cooking hobs to end up being able to avoid all of them
from catching fire.
? Examine the flues associated with coal and also wood
burning stoves for signs of leaks
and blockages.
? only utilize the gas recommended
by your heater manufacturer.

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l hot.
? Dispose regarding embers carefully.
If they?re nevertheless heat they might
cause a new fire or build-up of CO.
? Ensure most hobs have got shut-off
or isolation valvesThis has generated predictions that the brood stock would fall, removing the
foundations of the two lobster population along with a lifestyle in coastal Maine.

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Although nobody knows why lobsters have
thrived, experts have floated several theories.
The collapse of cod as well as other shark
stocks in early 1990's could have reduced the
numbers of predators that eat baby lobsters,
while increasing the habitat accessible to
lobsters. Lobstermen can be inadvertently in
the role of lobster minn kota terrova farmers,
as another possibility. The improved number
of traps -- and bait -- within the water might be
feeding the young, which can be small enough
to slip into and from traps. And Maine's
regulations -- which prohibit taking lobsters
more than a certain size -- may have made a
big stock of large breeders, hiding somewhere
out in the deep and also as yet undetected by
fisheries managers.
Whatever your reason, scientists say these are finally making some headway in managing lobster
resources. New information has pointed into a better way of predicting just what the population will
do later on.
Recent reports suggest that the perfect time to assess the prospects of a given generation of lobsters
occurs when they first settle at the base a couple of weeks after they are hatched, rather than
traditional time -- at around 7 years old, after they reach minimum commercial size.
Lobsters lay eggs from the tens of thousands, which hatch to become tiny larvae that will get carried
by ocean currents. Largemouth bass and other predators eat nearly all those larvae. But after 30 to
40 days, the cricket-sized survivors drop on the bottom and search for a spot to hide.
"Mortality drops off dramatically after the juveniles find shelter, mainly because they basically don't
move for the following year or so," says Richard A. Wahle, an analysis scientist with the Bigelow
Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay Harbor, Me. Mr. Wahle and his awesome colleagues
made this discovery by collecting young lobsters from your ocean floor to observe their population
trends. "You might have survival rates of 70 to 90 %, that was an unexpected to everyone."
Such work raised the possibility that by surveying juveniles, scientists could possibly predict better
what the commercial lobster stock may be like five or six years in the future.
"We've got this reasonably well nailed down, so that we must be able to make use of this like a good
indicator of population tendencies," says Robert S. Steneck in the University of Maine's Darling
Marine Center, in Walpole.
Mr. Steneck, Mr. Wahle, Ms. Cowan, as well as other scientists are tracking the juveniles since they
become adolescents, the period of time between when they leave their shelters at age 3 along with
the time, two to five years later, when they get to the minimum legal carapace duration of 31/4
inches and begin landing in lobster pounds. Mr. Steneck says they're already going to a "nice
correlation" between the quantity of bottom settlers they've recorded in the given year's "class" and
the number of undersized lobsters appearing in lobster traps many years later. Further confirmation

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can come from new trawl surveys through the Maine Department of Marine Resources, and data
from Ms. Cowan's intertidal surveys.
If you find a correlation between larvae future and settlement lobster landings, the fishery could be
set for a downturn. Since 1996, Mr. Wahle with his fantastic Bigelow colleague, oceanographer
Lewis S. Incze, have seen a drop in the amount of larvae and newly settled lobsters at two sites
within the western Gulf of Maine. If similar trends are occurring at other areas around the coast, the
lobster industry might visit a decline in the following couple of years.
"The major mystery is why there's this modification in larvae and post-larvae," Mr. Incze says. "Will
it be the transport? The egg hatching? The result of overfishing? We have no idea."
Scientists agree that early detection of changing population trends is less difficult than identifying
why the alterations are occurring. Understanding in which the larvae result from -- and what
conditions improve their survival -- has become a focus of research with this direction.
A tremendous proportion of larvae travel great distances on coastal currents before coming to
nursery grounds. That's one theory.
Last year, larval surveys by Eric Annis, a graduate student on the Darling Marine Center, suggested
that this Eastern Maine Coastal Current might work as a larvae
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/key/?n=marine superhighway. The current, which flows from east to west
down Maine's coast, may deliver huge quantities of larvae into Maine's highly productive Penobscot
Bay lobster fishery from as a long way away as New Brunswick, Canada. "If this proves correct,
then, from the big picture, which means how this fishery gets managed by other states and countries
is vital," says Mr. Incze, who supervised the research.
Earlier sampling of newly settled lobsters by Mr. Wahle also showed few larvae in eastern Maine
(where lobster catches are small) and enormous quantities in western Penobscot Bay (which
contains record landings). Mr. Steneck says it's possible that a warm ocean-temperature front off
Penobscot Bay may prompt many larvae to settle on the bottom, building a veritable snowfall of tiny
lobsters.
They caution they will not yet understand the relative significance of larvae that are hatched locally
and those transported along the coastal current. However if the latter are an important force,
natural variations in currents, wind patterns, and ocean temperature could considerably influence
the lobster fishery. A slight change could deposit commuting larvae in deep water (where they may
not survive) or on sand or mud bottoms (where they can make a brief meal for zander).
"It's possible that oceanographic factors are playing a significantly larger role in lobster demography
than are definitely the lobster catches," Mr. Steneck says. "That's almost heresy to express within a
world that's so seriously overfished, where numerous stocks happen to be entirely extracted. But
lobsters have demostrated themselves to become highly resilient."
Most scientists and fishermen, though, maintain that the drastically increased harvest rates recently
can't be maintained. The marine patterns could well shift back and send populations plummeting if
natural variations in the ocean have driven the lobster boom. According to everything we know,"
says Ms, "You can't keep taking lobsters at this intensity and level forever, no less than. Cowan,
tagging another tiny lobster around the darkening shore of Friendship Long Island.