…Save what’s left, and make more

Next week, the lobster season in Jamaica will be closed.  From April 1 until June 30, it is illegal to catch, sell or possess lobsters.  If you are caught, the penalties include fines and the possibility of jail time. There are very few exceptions.  Restaurants, for example, must satisfy Fisheries that any lobsters they sell were already on hand by March 31.

Why all the fuss, and why just for these few months?  At this time of year, there are two things Caribbean spiny lobsters must do to survive.  First, they moult.  They fill up their bodies with water, so their hard shells crack off and the soft new shell underneath stretches to make room for another year’s growth.  

It takes the new shells a while to harden, and while this is happening they mate.  Mother lobsters attach their fertilized eggs under their bodies and carry them around for about four weeks, until they are hard and ready to hatch.  (It is illegal at any time of year to take a female lobster carrying eggs.)  A lot of the baby lobsters will be eaten by fish before they settle back into the reef to start growing up, but the closed season at least gives them a chance to be born.

This little bit of protection, which has been in place for a long time, may be part of the reason why the lobster population hasn’t been wiped out along with most of Montego Bay’s other marine life.  They still support a modest fishery, though the average size is getting smaller.  This could be an early warning sign that in years to come, the lobsters won’t replace themselves as well – smaller females produce fewer eggs -- and this fishery too may fail.

The spiny lobsters should benefit from the Marine Park Trust’s GROW FISH program.  In the daytime they like to gather in small groups, sheltering in caves or under ledges in the reefs.  Managers of protected areas as far apart as Florida and New Zealand found that spiny lobsters were among the first species to show a large population increase when protection was established – as if they were being “recruited” from other areas.  About a year later, the population boom inside the protected area starts producing better catches outside, so everybody wins.

But closed seasons and no-take zones are not enough to make sure that these interesting and delicious creatures survive and prosper.  At all ages, they need clean water.  The baby lobsters need mangroves and seagrass beds to hide in while they grow.  Too many of these valuable nursery areas have been chopped down, ripped up and flooded with mud and pollution, to make room for resorts where guests complain about the high price of lobster.  If we really want healthy marine life, including lots of big lobsters, the process has to start with better management on land.

The spiny lobster is the biggest and most often seen of the lobsters on our reefs, but there are others.  More about that next week.