More than 10 years after marine biologist Dr Karl Aiken warned that Jamaica’s lobster stocks were under pressure from overfishing and at risk of being wiped out if remedial action was not taken, evidence is emerging that his assessment then was spot on.
“There is a lot of pressure on the lobster resources of the country, especially the stock that we used to have on Pedro Banks is now much smaller. It’s not about to disappear overnight, but it needs some help,” Aiken had told The Gleaner in January 2014. “While we’ve been concentrating on conch, the lobster resource has been languishing, and is taking a bit of a battering. It’s not extinct, but it is not in as good shape as we thought. It needs some help.”
During the annual closed season, which runs from April 1 to June 30, it is illegal to harvest any lobster at all. Also, under the Fisheries Act of 2018, it is illegal right throughout the year to (a) catch and bring ashore or destroy any berried (pregnant) lobster; (b) catch and bring ashore, or destroy, any spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) of carapace (head) length of less than 7.62 centimetres (three inches). Aiken, who was then a senior lecturer in the Department of Life Sciences, UWI Mona also called for the minimum carapace length to be increased to nine centimetres, which he insisted could make a big difference for the future of Jamaica’s lobster industry. Approving this increase in the minimum size could protect between 55 and 60 per cent of the spawning stock, compared to the 30-40 per cent it is estimated that the current size shelters, he pointed out.
“The industry will die in a few years if we keep this small present size,” Aiken had warned.
A comprehensive lobster abundance survey of the Pedro Banks, Jamaica’s main source of lobster, conducted in 2022, was troubling, to say the least, according to Kimberlee Cooke-Panton, senior research officer in the Capture Fisheries department at the National Fisheries Authority.
“We looked at the entire Pedro Banks, all three cays, spent 39 days out there and we trapped, and what I found was that was within the closed season between April to May, the amount of berried lobsters we found was less than 20 per cent of the total catch. Now, if this is during the closed season, you are thinking that at least 80 per cent of the catch should be berried lobster because it’s the closed season.
“It was telling us that the closed season isn’t actually working, the period that we would have thought that was protecting the mass of the berried lobsters, that it had actually shifted. So now we are looking into expanding the closed season because of the impact of change. Last year we had so many bleaching events because of the sea temperature rise which impacted our oceans and we have to bear these things in mind,” Cooke-Panton told The Sunday Gleaner last week.
In 2014, Cooke-Panton, whose area of expertise is the Caribbean spiny lobster, conducted a study while in Iceland, comparing Jamaica’s industry management practices with those of Cuba and found that the Spanish country had much more stringent regulations. Among the things which stood out was the fact that Cuba has an individual transferable quota, much like what obtains in the local conch industry.
“Also, they have done multiple independent stock assessments and continue to do so. This means they don’t rely on information provided solely by the fishers. They go out and do their own assessments and trapping and are able and to gather their data. Even their fishers, when they give information, it is reliable because the industry is State-owned. They are well ahead of the rest of the region.”
The spiny lobster assessment in Cuba is based on substantial available information such as compulsory daily reports of catch and efforts statistics by boats, monthly biological monitoring in several sample points in the lobster distribution areas and monthly weight categories from the processing plants. This is according to a technical report on an overview of the status of the Cuban spiny lobster fishery published in March 2018.
In Jamaica, fishing licences for lobster are issued every two years with the last issuance taking place in 2023 but when the next renewal session comes around in 2025, there could be some dislocation.
“Right now, we have 20 licences and the NFA is trying not to go beyond that because another study I did looking at 2020 data set was saying that we need to max it out at 16 licences in order to maintain a sustainable lobster fishery,” Cooke-Panton disclosed.