The impact of climate change on Exploited Lobster Stocks

Climate change is predicted to significantly affect the world's oceans, with increases in water temperature, changes in ocean currents, pH levels and winds. This chapter highlights the vulnerability of lobster stocks to climate change due to their long larval life. Western and southern rock lobsters in Australia are influenced by long-term increases in water temperatures which are projected to continue. These increases have influenced the size at maturity and size of migrating western rock lobsters. Climate change has been implicated in the abundance decline and increase in lobster diseases in the southern part of the Homarus americanus stock and in the increase in catches in n01thern regions. Regime shift in the north Pacific has been implicated in changes in abundance of Japanese and Hawaiian spiny lobsters. If the recmitment abundance is vulnerable then monitoring of prerecruits becomes very important and management strategies need to be sensitive to abundance trends. This chapter highlights the need to downscale climate change models to a spatial and temporal scale relevant to lobster stocks and the uncertainties in the climate change projections and their effect on the ecosystem.