Lobster population falls off New England, leading regulators to declare overfishing

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A new report says America’s lobsters, which have been in decline since 2018, are now being overfished off New England.

The stock has declined by 34% since that year in its most important fishing grounds, the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said Thursday. The commission said it now considers overfishing of the species to be occurring, and that could bring new management measures that restrict fishermen from catching them in the future.

Lobsters are among America’s most lucrative seafood species, and they were worth more than $700 million at the docks last year. The industry caught record high numbers of the crustaceans in the 2010s.

But the lobster population has shown “rapid declines in abundance in recent years,” the commission said in a st