HYANNIS – A recent study projects that American lobster and sea scallop fishing may face challenges in the future as climate change pushes suitable habitats farther north.
Researchers used models to estimate how the species will react to warming waters and suggested that American lobster will move further offshore and sea scallops will shift to the north in the coming decades.
This may pose fishery management challenges as the changes can move stocks into and out of fixed management areas.
Habitats within current management areas may see increases, decreases or no change in species populations as the species shift and move.
“Changes in stock distribution affect where fish and shellfish can be caught and who has access to them over time,” said Vincent Saba, a fishery biologist in the Ecosystems Dynamics and Assessment Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a co-author of the study in a statement.
“American lobster and sea scallop are two of the most economically valuable single-species fisheries in the entire United States. They are also important to the economic and cultural well-being of coastal communities in the Northeast. Any changes to their distribution and abundance will have major impacts,” he said.
The study results were published in Diversity and Distributions.
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