Vol. 2, No. 4 Contents Headline Back Issues Fall 1998
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Large lobsters lure Pew fellow Bob Steneck to ocean floor Editor
In fact, Steneck was once inside a small research submarine charged by a 20-pound/nine kilogram lobster. The pilot was worried, but there were no dents. Another time, he nearly lost a thumb-wrestling match with a burly specimen determined to remain in its underwater burrow. Giants? Maybe not. But what they lack in size they seem to make up for in...well, crabbiness. A professor in the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, Steneck studies lobsters of all sizes in the Gulf of Maine, describing himself as an "ecologist who works on the distribution and abundance of organisms and what makes them tick." And yes, he does like to eat lobsters as well as scrutinize them. A lifetime underwater
Steneck's high-tech equipment is a world away from the kind of underwater gear he used in his youth. A childhood fascination with water drew him into scuba diving in 1960 at age 10. Diving mostly in local lakes in New Jersey, Steneck used a home-made air reservoir inflated with a bicycle pump. "I'd stay down until I'd get headaches," he recalls. During college, Steneck's interest turned from freshwater systems to the ocean. Immediately after graduation he began working with the Smithsonian Institution studying coral reefs in the Caribbean, living, at that time, in the pontoon of a trimaran sailboat. Steneck focused his master's degree research on Maine's famous rocky coastal habitat. Following one more stint in the Caribbean, he completed a Ph.D. in ecology and evolution in the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, finishing early to return happily to Maine in 1982 for a job that opened at the University of Maine's Darling Marine Center in Walpole. "Sailing is probably the one thing I do that isn't goal oriented," says Steneck. He and his wife Joanne, an attorney, let the wind determine their course when they take their 30-foot sailboat Physalia out to explore the coast of Maine. What's Physalia? "It's the genus of the Portuguese Man of War which is an unfortunate common name for a beautiful invertebrate predator that uses the wind as its sole means of locomotion," he explains. Where do baby lobsters come from? Steneck and the graduate students who work with him are studying the Gulf's lobster population brood stock lobsters in particular in the hope of learning where the fishery's future lies. For the last century, fishery managers have warned that lobsters are being over-fished. But in recent years, harvesters have questioned how the population can still be considered to be in danger when their catches were bigger than ever. A record 23,000 tons/20,866 tonnes were landed in Maine in 1997. Lobster catches in Maine dipped last summer, but, Steneck said in November, "It might be a little early to know if there will be a real dip throughout the Gulf of Maine." In the fall, an infection sickened and killed Maine lobsters on a daily basis. Were these just blips in lobster livelihood, or signs of something serious to come? "It's essential to know if fluctuations [in lobster populations] are oceanographically or environmentally controlled, or the result of overfishing" to understand the status of the fishery, Steneck says.
"I can't speak to the risk [though] I think we are all concerned about overfishing," says Steneck. Even so, he adds, "Nobody doubts we've seen huge expansion in lobster populations in recent decades." He hypothesizes that a population of long-lived and prolific brood stock lobsters is living in the Gulf's deep waters such as those east of Penobscot Bay. Steneck believes that the eastern Maine coastal current may be carrying the lobster larvae that hatch in those waters into shallower coastal areas to the west. "I suspect it may be the larvae superhighway for the settlement we're seeing in western Penobscot Bay." Research is all wet Steneck and his graduate students collect data during sampling sessions aboard lobster boats; on thousands of scuba dives; and during some 70 dives to date at sites throughout the Gulf of Maine in small two- to four-person submarines hired primarily from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. Funding for the submersible dives comes from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's National Undersea Research Program. Submersibles can explore parts of the ocean floor that federal trawl surveys avoid because of gear conflicts with lobster traps. When a lobster is spotted from inside the submersible, a camera mounted on the sub transfers the image to a video screen on which lasers produce dots that are a known distance apart. These provide scale so the lobster's image can be measured to within about .16 inches/four millimeters of accuracy, according to Steneck. "Lobsters are particularly good study organisms because they are curious and aggressive," usually emerging from their burrows to fend off invaders. At the least, a claw is likely to protrude from the lobster's burrow. By measuring the claw, scientists can estimate the lobster's carapace length (distance from eye-socket to base of tail), according to Steneck. Although the Maine Department of Marine Resources plans to incorporate his sea sampling information into its database, Steneck maintains, "We don't really have a good means of getting that information in the regulatory process to date as far as I can see." For now, he is working to bring his findings directly to people who harvest lobsters, and who, under a recently established co-management process, decide how to conserve the resource.
Involving harvesters Scientists and the lobster fishing industry need to collaborate to fill information gaps in state and federal research, says Steneck. "It's pretty obvious to me that some of the disconnect that exists with scientists and lobstermen has to do with [the fact that] the fishery manager developing the law has to consider how to manage the stock over its entire range," which, in the case of the Atlantic lobster fishery, extends from Canada to North Carolina. Within that huge region, the lobster's distribution and abundance can vary drastically, resulting in creation of a region-wide policy that seems appropriate in some areas, but inappropriate to those fishing in another. "I think the ecological approach that I've been taking turns out to be a scale that most of the lobstermen understand pretty well," he says. Most lobster harvesters support the concept of fishing at sustainable levels, and are very willing to help scientists gather data, says Steneck."When I got started back in the 80s I was warned by colleagues that, this is a difficult bunch.' They were wrong." It was simply that, in the past, lobstermen had not been encouraged to participate in research, he says. Last fall, Steneck brought some lobstermen down to the ocean floor in a submersible for a rare opportunity to see the underside of their fishing grounds. They helped Steneck choose dive sites that were likely to be home to brood stock lobsters, and their excitement prodded Steneck to remember the exhilaration of his own first trips to the bottom of the sea. "There certainly are times when all of a sudden it strikes me: I'm staring at a portion of the planet that no human has ever seen before and probably never will again. It's a needle in a haystack 150 miles [240 kilometers] offshore. It's a little like going to the moon. Everyone knows it's there but few people get a chance to go." You can E-mail Bob Steneck at steneck@maine.edu for more information on his research. |
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Walpole, Maine - Some of marine scientist Bob Steneck's research adventures sound like script ideas for vintage B movies the kind with trailers narrated by overwrought announcers promising, "You'll scream in horror as giant lobsters attack submarines!" 
Steneck counts the hours he's logged in scuba dives over the years in the "thousands," and they have included thrillingly close encounters with sharks and other impressive residents of the deep. Even so, during his first dive in a small research submarine (or submersible) in 1984, he says, "I was more giddy than useful as a scientist."
Managers maintain that too many lobsters are being harvested before they are old enough to reproduce, jeopardizing the future of one of the Gulf's most important fisheries. Lobsters are roughly six to nine years old when they reach legal size for harvesting, but are unable to reproduce throughout most of the Gulf of Maine until they are about nine or ten years old.
A fellowship awarded to Steneck last summer by the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation will help with his efforts "to bring the best available ecological research to fisheries questions and communicate [the results] to industry. The money goes to the graduate students [who] are out with harvesters taking data, learning the trade, communicating with them, answering their questions, having workshops."