The Wrack

Adapting inexpensive technology to discover where lobsters experience the most stress en route between capture and kitchen.

Using ocean drifters (small buoys carrying GPS units) as a stand-in for microscopic lobster larvae will allow scientists to get a better idea of where those larvae drift during their first weeks living as plankton before they settle to the bottom where they grow to adulthood.

The Wells Reserve will receive about $250,000 over 2 years to study how warming coastal waters are affecting lobsters in the Gulf of Maine, as part of Sea Grant's American Lobster Initiative.

Estuaries give us many reasons to be grateful, but high on our list this year is their importance to one particular Maine icon: the American Lobster (Homarus americanus).

Dr. Jason Goldstein will oversee the Wells Reserves fish studies, salt marsh restoration activities, and long-term environmental monitoring program. He will expand the reserves shellfish program, currently focused on green crab research, into lobster and Jonah crab ecology.