Collaborative Research

COLLABORATIVE SCIENCE: MONITORING RELEASES

In 2006 fishermen and scientists began working together to develop a program to monitor some of the lobster release sites. It is technically difficult and prohibitively expensive to tag small juvenile lobsters and because it takes a lobster approximately seven years to reach fishable size. So for monitoring purposes Penobscot East initiated important long term collaborations with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, for dive monitoring of settlement areas and with Dr. Rick Wahle of Mt. Desert Island Biological Laboratory to apply lobster genomics for identifying hatchery-reared lobsters.  In 2008 and 2009 the monitoring and genetics research were funded through a two-year award from the University of Maine Sea Grant Program.

feet up

Each season, Dr. Wahle and a dive team inspect the bottom locations where the juveniles have been released to determine how successfully they have re settled. This year, the 2010 season, he plans four dive surveys, each taking a full day on the water at the various resettlement locations.

Divers use two techniques, visual and suction sampling, to check for proper habitat, other lobsters and associated biota, such as crabs.  There are four pairs of research release sites, eight sites in all in different districts of Zone C. One site in each pair serves as a control which does not receive any lobsters. Divers place a meter square quadrant on the site and examine the content of the individual squares. Two pairs of divers can do 20 quadrants at every site taking forty five minutes each.

MONITORING TIMELINE:

Year 1: 2006 evaluated stages IV (around 14 days old) and V (around 28 days old) releases, discovering that    stage IVs may not settle where they are released

Year 2: 2007 continued expansion of Stage Vs monitoring

Year 3: 2008 Stage V releases and genetic analysis

Year 4: 2009 Stage V releases and genetic analysis

Year 5: 2010 continued monitoring of Stage V resettlement sites

GENETIC FINGERPRINTING

The plan is to genetically test any lobsters that are collected against samples taken from the hatchery stock prior to release when the maternal DNA is recorded. The number of matches will tell us how many hatchery-reared lobsters have survived or at least remained within the release location. Lobster tissue samples from field and hatchery collections enable Dr. Gerlach (University of Oldenburg) and her graduate student, Jana Deppermann, to conduct the genetic fingerprinting analysis, the centerpiece of this study.  Results are expected in mid 2010 and the indications so far are very encouraging.