A benchmark stock assessment for American lobster (Homarus americanus) has been initiated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to evaluate east coast stock health and to inform the future management of the species. The appraisal is to be completed in summer 2020.
ASMFC’s stock assessment process and meetings are open to the public, with the exception of discussions of confidential data, when the public will be asked to leave the room.
The commission said it would welcome the submission of data sources that would contribute to the goals of the assessment. This includes data on abundance, biological samples, life history information, stock connectivity, catch and information regarding the environmental influence on lobster life history. For data sets to be considered, the data must be sent in the required format, with accompanying description of methods, to the commission by 13 April 2018.
A data workshop will be conducted in May at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, which will review available data sources for American lobster and identify datasets to be incorporated in the stock assessment.
The American lobster fishery is one of the most valuable fisheries along the Atlantic coast with an ex-vessel value of USD 666.7 million (EUR 537.6 million) and coast-wide landings of 157.7 million pounds (71,532 metric tons – MT) in 2016.
While this level of landings represented a new record for the time series, it masked the regional changes that have taken place, said ASMFC in its new Annual Report. Specifically, the 2015 stock assessment indicated record high abundance for the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank stock and record low abundance for the Southern New England stock.
