UMaine: midcoast baby lobsters fell 80 percent, and the adults followed

Maine’s midcoast lobster decline showed up in the small lobsters first. A University of Maine news release dated Oct. 15, 2026, says an 80 percent drop in baby lobsters sampled from 2010 to 2022 was followed by a 70 percent decline in young lobsters since 2015 and a 50 percent decline in adults large enough for lobstermen to keep. The work, with the Department of Marine Resources, is published in Marine Ecology Progress Series. Young lobsters in the study are those with shell lengths of 45 to 83 millimeters.

The steepest losses were from Brunswick to the Schoodic Peninsula. That stretch had doubled in the samples from the 2000s to the 2010s before the drop. The release says the Gulf of Maine’s overall lobster population has declined since the mid-2010s. Maine landings in 2025 were worth more than $461 million. Lead researcher Robert Jarrett II, a recent UMaine Ph.D. graduate, ties the clearest baby-to-adult signal in central Maine to warmer water and faster growth. Downeast Maine had a similar drop in baby lobsters sampled since 2010, but a smaller drop among adults. Southern Maine samples have stayed relatively stable since 2010. The release says deeper water there stays too cold for lobsters, so the habitat they can use has not expanded the way it has farther east.

The surveys used divers, traps, and trawls. Jarrett and co-author Kathleen Reardon, DMR’s senior lobster scientist, both note the limits: fewer Downeast samples, and lobsters shifting into deeper habitat that the surveys do not cover evenly. The release says the baby-lobster drop still lined up with later drops in adolescent lobsters on the midcoast and Downeast. Contact for the university release is Marcus Wolf, marcus.wolf@maine.edu, 207-581-3721.

This is a The Gillnet news desk summary, not a reprint.

Source: University of Maine News — Baby lobster decline foreshadows major midcoast population losses (Oct. 15, 2026).