When we think about climate change, we tend to think in terms of physical damage to our world and our health: eroding shores, wildfires and floods, increases in tick-borne illnesses, heat stroke and asthma. But there are less tangible damages to our culture and sense of place. The loss of the centuries-old shrimp fishery in New Hampshire and Maine is a tragic example.
Shrimp from the cold waters of the Gulf of Maine wasn’t just an industry or a job or a source of food – it was a touchstone for New Hampshire and Maine coastal communities and families.
Every year during February and March, families brought in thousands of pounds of the tiny, cold-loving Atlantic Northern Shrimp and sold them on docks and piers and on the roadside up and down the coast. During peak years, 10 million pounds of the delicacy were caught.
“I have great memories of going down to the wharf when a shrimp boat came in to fill my pot for a fun evening of eating shrimp and catching up with friends and family,” said Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Etrie, a member of a Maine fishing family and now Ocean Policy Director for Conservation Law Foundation.
Etrie says the population of shrimp swung wildly from year to year and high levels of fishing caused the fishery to collapse first in the 1970s. While it quickly recovered, the fishery experienced another collapse in the early 2010s. Environmental conditions were worsening – thanks to climate change the water was becoming unwelcomingly warm. The Gulf of Maine during that period was warming as fast as any body of water in the world, and a 2012 heatwave may have helped push the population over the edge not only by creating conditions too warm for the shrimp, but by attracting larger schools of their predators, especially longfin squid.
In an effort to see if regulators could save what was left, the plug was pulled on the shrimp fishery. In 2013, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission implemented a fishing moratorium, hoping a year with no catch might bring the shrimp back. The moratorium continues to this day.
This February, the state of Maine permitted seven fishing boats to go out and catch shrimp to see if just maybe they had returned in numbers that made a return to the fishery viable for both the shrimpers and the shrimp fishery. According to Ben Martens, head of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, those fishermen spent thousands of dollars of their own money to outfit and fuel boats to go back to the Gulf of Maine to see if the shrimp were back. The results were more than disappointing.
According to Martens, one boat returned with five pounds of shrimp. Another boat, incredibly, returned with just 12 shrimp – not 12 pounds, but just 12 of the tiny individual shrimp. Not one of the seven boats found evidence of a revitalized stock. As NOAA’s website puts it: “The stock has not recovered, and the fishery is still closed.”
Martens, the head of the fishermen’s association, has not completely given up hope.
With proper management, and that means a closed fishery, the shrimp might find ways to adapt to changed water temperature; maybe the status of predators could change – left alone, the shrimp possibly could return. But the prospects aren’t great.
“This is a story of climate change, and it is a story of mismanagement,” said Martens. “Shrimp was such an important cultural part of our fishery. You don’t want to say it is over.”
Tom Irwin is the Conservation Law Foundation’s Vice President for New Hampshire.
