Climate change threatens New England lobster fishers' work

Single mom Kelsey Barker works on a lobster boat off the coast of Vindalhaven, Maine. The job has allowed her financial freedom she would be hard-pressed to find with other local jobs, she said. (Boston Globe photo by Jessica Rinaldi)

We know climate change is affecting the livelihoods of farmers, those in the tourism industry, and more. But here's another one to add to the list: lobster fishermen. A two-part series by Jenna Russell of The Boston Globe and Penelope Overton of the Portland Press Herald digs into what that looks like at the local level on Vindalhaven, a small island whose population relies on the lobster industry. In short, "the climate disaster that Maine fishermen dread is not some far-off, half-formed threat. It’s here," they report.

The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest-warming ocean areas on the planet. For a while that worked in favor of local fishermen. "Lobsters, which make up the nation’s second-most valuable fishery, are sensitive to temperature, preferring the chilly North Atlantic to southerly waters," Russell and Overton report. "Since the 1970s, the epicenter of the lobster population has shifted more than 100 miles to the north as the Gulf of Maine warmed. That brought new prosperity to Maine coastal villages, while in southern New England, lobster populations and profits dwindled — and, in some places, all but vanished."

It's starting to happen in the Gulf of Maine too: "Maine lobstermen caught less in 2019 than in any of the last 12 years — down about 23 percent from the 2016 high," Russell and Overton report. Demand stayed low last year because of the pandemic, but even if this year's predicted rebound comes to pass, locals are worried about the future.

Climate change is hurting lobstermen in more than one way. Not only are they getting smaller lobster catches, but they're facing sweeping new restrictions meant to protect the North Atlantic right whale, whose food supply has been disrupted by climate change. "As they roam new routes in search of food, more whales are suffering injury or death resulting from entanglements in fishing lines, the ropes that stretch from traps on the sea floor to buoys floating on the surface," Russell and Overton report. "The growing risk to the whales, which now teeter on the brink of extinction, is driving a crackdown on lobstermen, the most catastrophic fallout they have faced to date as an indirect result of climate change."

Regulators will soon ask lobstermen to buy new gear that minimizes the danger to whales, but most balk at the notion. They're also having a hard time considering transitioning to another way of life, or even talking about it. Reaction to the issue on Vindalhaven is a microcosm of global reaction to climate change: "Every reading from the scientific buoy makes it harder to deny the world is warming," Russell and Overton report. "Yet many on this island of 1,200 still deny it, their complicated responses to climate change — disbelief, anger, grief, resistance — mirroring those of people everywhere. All the world, in different ways, is facing the same choice: to come to terms with life-altering disruption and adapt, or to turn away."