Global warming is the atmosphere of the earth getting warmer. Its happening because all of the CO2 we use is polluting the atmosphere. This pollution and rise in temperature is taking its tole on the oceans, they are beginning to get warmer and become more acidic. This is hurting coral reefs abilities to grow and scientist expect a major die off in the next 50 years.
Like coral reefs lobsters rely on drawing calcium carbonate from the water to build there shells. If the waters of the Northeast Atlantic grow more acidic, crustaceans will have to work harder to build there shells, and will have less energy for finding and getting food. This could have a serious impact on lobsters ability to reproduce, and could seriously hurt the lobster industry.
How are warm waters impacting lobster?
Scientist have found that the waters of Maine have been steadily increasing over the last few years, but so has the lobster population. They don't expect that trend to keep going though, smaller lobsters feed off the plankton, which have two large blooms a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. The warmer waters could move the plankton blooms to later in the fall and earlier in the spring. That means no plankton would be around when the lobster larvae are around in the summer, so they would have nothing to feed on. South of Cape Cod the lobster population left about 10 years ago and has never fully came back. Warmer dirties waters are also giving the lobsters a disease called shell disease. It does nothing to affect the meat of the lobster but it makes the shell to unsightly for sale. Scientist from Southern Maine say the warm waters hurting or helping the lobster literally depends on a few degrees. If the water temperatures rise just a couple degrees the lobsters food will grow rapidly and they will have lots of food to eat. But if it raises to much the lobsters become stress and will start to die off.
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