Scientists Puzzled Over Dying Lobsters

August 4 -- Twelve days ago, Joe Fink named his newborn baby girl after his fishing boat, Rebecca. This week he had to put his daughter’s namesake up for sale.

“I hated doing it. I built it myself,” says Fink, who is president of the Western Long Island Lobsterman Association. “But I realized I had to. Right now there’s just no future.”

Fink is one of the hundreds of lobstermen in New York and Connecticut who have been forced to abandon lobstering as the insect-like crustaceans disappear from Long Island Sound. State officials estimate that 11 million lobsters or 90 percent of the entire population died in the Sound last fall. This summer, the main money-making season for most lobstermen, the crustaceans are again a no-show.

The losses are significant since the Sound usually generates about $45 million in annual sales and is the nation’s third-largest lobster source, behind Maine and Massachusetts.

“It’s way worse,” says Jeff Carbone, a lobster distributor based in Huntington, New York, who says he’s taking in 80 percent fewer lobsters than last summer. “I had 25 lobstermen supplying me, now I’ve got eight. These guys just don’t want to take any chances.”

So Far, One Parasite

The cause of the die-off has befuddled scientists ever since lobsters started disappearing in large numbers last September. The only definitive finding so far is that of a protozoan parasite that University of Connecticut veterinary pathologist Richard French located in all 150-200 lobsters he sampled from the Sound last fall.

“It would be unusual to see such a massive mortality associated with a single parasite,” says French. “But it’s not out of the question.”

But many lobstermen think a single parasite is hardly the only problem. They are convinced the die-off is related to mosquito sprayings in Connecticut and New York. Both states border the Sound and have conducted sprayings to prevent the spread of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus. Lobstermen associations from the Long Island Sound region are now working on a class action suit that they expect to file against New York and Connecticut by the end of the summer.