Although there have no cases reported in Canada yet, maritime biologists on the east coast are on the lookout for cases of lobsters with a disease that eats away at their shells.
The shell disease doesn’t affect the meat, or pose a risk to humans, but can prevent younger lobster from molting (shedding their shell) thereby causing its death.
This is especially a problem for females who delay molting to produce eggs, and as such may die before producing a next generation.
Its also a problem for fishermen as lobsters with any lesions are basically unmarketable.
US fishermen and biologists have been watching the disease move slowly northward up the coast toward Canada. So far up to 25% of lobsters caught in Massachusetts show signs of the disease, and now there are cases reported in Maine.
“Everybody’s on the watch for it, to see if there’s any kind of spread into their area,” said Robert Macmillan, a provincial lobster biologist in Prince Edward Island. “I don’t know how or when or if it will ever reach this part of the world.”
Michel Comeau, a lobster biologist with federal Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Moncton, New Brunswick says, “The United States spent millions of dollars trying to identify the cause, however the real cause of why it is affecting some lobster in some areas and not really in other areas, nobody knows really.”
The infection first appeared in New England waters in the 1990s.
It’s unknown whether the origin of the disease is related to warmer water temperatures, said Comeau.
Kathy Castro, a fisheries biologist at the University of Rhode Island Fisheries Center said shell disease could be linked to a number of pressures such as rising water temperatures, pollution and low oxygen levels in the water,
Seafood exports, especially lobster sales, are a big business in Canada.
The province of New Brunswick was Canada’s largest exporter of seafood in 2012,of which lobster is the most valuable product. The province’s seafood exports last year were valued at $967.2 million, followed by Nova Scotia at $915.4 million and British Columbia at $871.5 million.
Lobster is the most valuable single Canadian seafood product, which accounted for $1 billion in Canada’s overall seafood exports.
(with files from CBC)
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