Female American lobster ( Homarus americanus ) size-at-maturity declined in Canada during the 20th and early 21st centuries

Changes in the environment and fishing have been shown to affect life-history characteristics, such as size or age of maturation, in a number of finfish and invertebrates. The American lobster (Homarus americanus) supports Canada's most valuable fishery and exploitation rates are high. Female s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Canadian journal of fisheries and aquatic sciences 2018-06, Vol.75 (6), p.908-924
Main Authors: Haarr, Marthe Larsen, Sainte-Marie, Bernard, Comeau, Michel, Tremblay, M. John, Rochette, Remy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abundance
American lobster
Animal populations
Climate change
Crustaceans
Egg production
Environmental aspects
Environmental changes
Evolution
Exploitation
Fecundity
Females
Fish
Fish eggs
Fisheries
Fishery management
Fishery regulations
Fishing
Global warming
Harvesting
Homarus americanus
Invertebrates
Life cycle
Life history
Lobster fisheries
Lobsters
Marine
Maturation
Modelling
Natural history
Observations
Ocean temperature
Physiological aspects
Population density
Seafood
Sexual maturity
Shellfish
Size-at-age
Size-at-first-maturity
Size-limit regulations
Spawning stock biomass
Water temperature
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Changes in the environment and fishing have been shown to affect life-history characteristics, such as size or age of maturation, in a number of finfish and invertebrates. The American lobster (Homarus americanus) supports Canada's most valuable fishery and exploitation rates are high. Female size-at-maturity (SM) is an important parameter in management of this species, as it is used in establishing minimum legal size regulations. In this study, we show with historical and recent data that SM of female American lobsters has declined across most of Canada, in some areas by as much as 30%, over the past 10-80 years. The spatial patterns of these declines are inconsistent with patterns of rising ocean temperature and lobster abundance (density). They are, however, strongly correlated to the strength of size-based fishery selection, and egg-per-recruit modeling indicates a gain in lifetime egg production associated with observed SM declines under a range of realistic harvesting scenarios. These findings suggest that the marked decrease we document in SM of female American lobsters in Canada over the past century represents an evolutionary response to intense exploitation.
ISSN:0706-652X
1205-7533
DOI:10.1139/cjfas-2016-0434