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Mombourquette, D.R., Charles, A., & Stephenson, R.L. (2025) Impacts of fishery policy on the distribution of access and community benefits. Marine Policy, 181: 106830. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2025.106830
ABSTRACT: This paper provides an illustration of how fishery policies, particularly relating to transferability of licenses and quota holdings, can alter the distribution of fishery access, rights and benefits across fishing communities. Such distributional changes have consequences, but these are rarely made explicit within management, and there is too often a lack of effort to predict, monitor or mitigate those consequences. As seen in this paper, the lack of attention to distributional impacts can produce possibly-unintended but certainly highly negative impacts on some fishing communities. In particular, a temporal analysis of the distribution of access and benefits for lobster, groundfish and herring fisheries in part of the Atlantic region of Canada shows how a specific community (Grand Manan) lost fishery access and benefits, linked to policy changes over a four-decade time period. The resulting community-level impacts, including a decline in local prosperity, and a loss of diversity and resilience in the local economy, were largely untracked by government. This experience demonstrates the importance of establishing and monitoring explicit objectives related to community viability and wellbeing, within fishery management and policy processes. Greater attention to the distributional consequences of fisheries policies (and regulations) can contribute to policy that better balances multiple management objectives and trade-offs among these, and that can better consider concerns regarding fairness and equity.
Kim, M., Cao, D., Cavaleri, V., Han, K., Mun, S., & Jeon, S. J. (2025) Epizootic shell disease induces systemic transcriptomic shifts in Homarus americanus, characterized by increased shell degradation and impaired energy metabolism across tissues. Frontiers in Physiology, 16, 1642696.
ABSTRACT: Epizootic shell disease (ESD) is characterized by shell erosion, pitting, and melanization in the American lobster (Homarus americanus) and is associated with a polymicrobial infection. The disease is multifactorial, with several contributing factors such as rising water temperatures and environmental pollution, which may facilitate bacterial invasion and increase host susceptibility. In a previous study, we found that the microbiome composition of the carapace in lobsters with ESD differed from that of healthy individuals, with ESD-associated bacteria enriched in the green gland and testis. However, the effects of bacterial infection on internal organs have not been clearly identified. In this study, we investigated the effects of ESD on four major tissues of the lobster (testis, intestine, hepatopancreas, and green gland) using transcriptomic analysis. A total of 564 genes were differentially expressed in the testis, 105 in the intestine, 149 in the hepatopancreas, and 296 in the green gland. The expression of the anti-lipopolysaccharide factor gene was increased in all tissues, indicating a systemic immune response to bacterial infection. Notably, chitinase genes involved in chitin degradation were upregulated, while the acetyl-coenzyme A transporter 1-like gene related to energy metabolism was significantly downregulated in the testis. In the intestine, expression of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase cytosolic [GTP] and cytochrome P450 genes, which are involved in gluconeogenesis and xenobiotic metabolism, respectively, was reduced. The hepatopancreas showed decreased expression of hemocyanin genes, which play key roles in oxygen transport and immune defense in crustaceans. The green gland exhibited reduced expression of heat shock proteins involved in the cellular stress response, organic cation transporter proteins that mediate the excretion of organic cations, and UDP-xylose and UDP-N-acetylglucosamine transporters required for glycosylation and chitin biosynthesis. Together, these transcriptional changes suggest that ESD may compromise physiological functions such as immune defense, energy metabolism, and stress response, while promoting chitin degradation and cuticle remodeling in response to shell infection. This study revealed tissue-specific transcriptomic responses to ESD in the American lobster, providing a foundation for elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying disease progression.
Lobster Research
The Canadian Lobster Research Network (CLRN) aims to further our understanding of American lobster (Homarus americanus) to support sustainable and profitable lobster fisheries in the face of rapid climate and ecosystem changes. We feel one way to support this goal is through enhancing communications about new lobster research. Below you will find the abstracts and links to recent science publications related to lobster or lobster fisheries
McClenachan, L., B. Neal, M. McMahan, E. Batchelder, N. Villanueva-Galarza, and J. Grabowski. 2025. “ Fishers' Local Ecological Knowledge Reveals Complex Food Web Dynamics With Rapidly Warming Waters.” Fish and Fisheries 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.70021
ABSTRACT: Local ecological knowledge (LEK) can provide insight into ecosystem change, particularly in dynamic ecological conditions, such as those driven by climate change. In New England lobster fisheries, warming waters have the potential to disrupt food webs, as range-shifting species introduce novel ecological interactions. Here we use interviews with lobster fishers in Maine and Massachusetts to understand lobster fishers' LEK of dynamic food webs, taking a mental modelling approach to construct LEK food web models under rapidly warming waters. We find that fishers are observing a remarkable range of ecological interactions across habitats, collectively reporting knowledge of > 35 species that interact trophically with lobster across larval, juvenile, and adult life stages, ranging from terrestrial species like mink (Neovison vison) to deep sea species like redfish (Sebastes fasciatus). Our LEK food webs demonstrate perceptions of warming water altering species' abundances and interactions, with an overall negative impact on lobster fisheries. Fishers also report knowledge of complex interactions, including predation, competition, and habitat loss mediated by warming waters and changing species' abundances. Finally, we identify and categorise three main pathways that contribute to fishers' LEK, including observation, word of mouth, and inference. Our findings demonstrate that active fishers have complex understandings of food web interactions in dynamic ecosystems that are changing rapidly. With management unable to keep pace with climate-driven change, fishers' LEK is an invaluable source of knowledge, whose use could improve the ability to understand the diverse impacts of warming waters on coastal ecosystems.
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