Shifting Baselines : Another Decline: Lobsters

The Shifting Baselines Blog

Jennifer Jacquet is a Ph.D. candidate with the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. She works closely with Dr. Daniel Pauly, who coined the term Shifting Baselines, the syndrome on which this blog focuses.
Josh Donlan is a conservation scientist and a Visting Fellow at Cornell University. He often hides out in the backcountry of the Teton Mountains, pondering bygone giant beavers and ground sloths. He also is also the founder and Director of Advanced Conservation Strategies and has a habit of restoring remote islands.

Scientist turned filmmaker Randy Olson, founder of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project is also a blog contributor.

Search

New Projects & Publications

November 2008 Jennifer Jacquet is lead author of the study In hot soup: sharks captured in Ecuador's waters published in Environmental Sciences.

November 27, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Why Consumers Alone Can't Save Our Fish" at 1pm at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C.

August 2008: Josh Donlan is co-author on a new paper titled Integrating invasive mammal eradications and biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch: conservation opportunities and challenges for seabirds and sea turtles published in Biological Invasions.

August 2008: Jennifer Jacquet is co-author on a new paper titled Funding Priorities: Big Barriers to Small-Scale Fisheries published in Conservation Biology.

August 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Journal of Applied Ecology titled Diversity, invasive species, and extinctions in insular ecosystems.

July 26, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the East Coast at the Woods Hole Film Festival in MA.

July 24, 2008: Josh Donlan gives a talk on biodiversity offsets to The Alcoa Foundation and the Alcao Intalco Aluminum Plant in Bellingham, Washington.

July 22, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "A Way Forward in a Sea of Market Based Initiatives to Save Wild Fish" at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA.

July 19, 2008: Randy Olson's film Sizzle premieres on the West Coast at Outfest in Hollywood, CA.

July 17, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "In Hot Soup: Shark's Captured in Ecuador's Waters" at the Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting in Chattanooga, TN.

July 9, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Flawed Data, Reef Fisheries, And Food Security: A Close Inspection Of Marine Fisheries Catches in Mozambique, Tanzania, Fiji, And The Solomon Islands" at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

June/July 2008: Josh Donlan attends training for his Kinship Conservation Fellowship in Bellingham, WA.

May 2008: Josh Donlan is an author on a new paper in Ambio titled High impact Conservation: Invasive Mammal Eradications from the Islands of Western Mexico.

May 15, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet reviews Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood at the Tyee.

April 2008: Trade Secrets: Renaming and Mislabeling of Seafood by Jennifer Jacquet and Daniel Pauly is published in Marine Policy.

April 2008: Randy Olson and the Puget Sound Partnership release the flash video Shifting Baselines in the Sound:.

Mar. 2008: Dr. Josh Donlan joins the Shifting Baselines blog.

Jan. 2008 Jennifer Jacquet launches the Eat Like a Pig Seafood Wallet Card

Online Resources and Blogs

« More on Shark Finning: 70 million | Main | A Galapagos Interruption: FLOCK OF DODOS airs tonight on Showtime »

Another Decline: Lobsters

Category: Seafood
Posted on: May 16, 2007 10:15 AM, by Jennifer L. Jacquet

In the 1960s, Godfrey Merlen, a longtime resident of Galapagos, remembers hoards of spiny lobster antennae that resembled "bouquets of underwater flowers". Today, lobsters are a rare sight to divers. There are still a few refuges because the conditions are so rough that fishermen cannot frequent the sites. But, on calm days, these lobster homes are hit hard and the populations continues to the decline. According to Fernando Ortiz at Conservation International, the catch-per-unit-effort for lobsters in Galapagos has hit a record low. Almost all spiny lobsters caught in Galapagos are exported to the global market (think Red Lobster).

Photo of lobster fishermen from 1958 published in H. Idrovo's Galapagos: Huellas en el Paraiso

Comments

It's amazing to me that the lobster population has declined so rapidly. I mean 1960 is only 47 years ago thats a relatively short time for a whole population to be nearly wiped out. I wasnt aware that things were this bad for lobsters, I knew that fish were being overharvested but I had no idea about the lobster. Just wondering is there anything I can do to help with the problem besides not purchasing lobster and other over fished marine life

Posted by: Ashley Johnson | May 16, 2007 5:20 PM

Lobsters are now a global commodity and wealthy nations are willing to pay top dollar for them. Like many luxury goods, their status (and price) can actually increase with scarcity. Therefore, it is not enough to not eat lobsters (though this is a great start) but we must also become actively engaged as citizens that support managing collective public goods (i.e., fisheries) COLLECTIVELY. Right now we have a government that caters almost entirely to producers' needs. With strong voices and actions, we need to remind the government that consumers and the environment are still worthy causes.

Posted by: Jennifer Jacquet | May 17, 2007 11:28 AM