The role of food limitation in lobster population dynamics in coastal Maine, United States, and New Brunswick, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Lobster ( Homarus americanus ) landings in Maine, United States have increased steadily over the past two decades to levels that are consistently more than triple the 40‐year (1950 to 1990) annual average of c. 9000 MT. Meanwhile, the use of herring ( Clupea harengus ) as bait has increased fourfold since the 1970s, and is currently subsidising lobster productivity in mid‐coast Maine by augmenting the diet and growth of large juvenile and young adult lobsters before they recruit to the fishery. We investigated whether herring bait in the eastern portions of the Gulf of Maine is also subsidising these lobster populations. In 2004, we compared stomach contents, tissue production via stable isotope ratios, and growth rates of lobsters from seasonally open (Cutler, Maine, United States) and closed (Dipper Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada) fishing areas in the spring, summer, and autumn. Contrary to previous results in mid‐coast Maine, lobsters from seasonally closed sites at Dipper Harbour outgrew those from fished sites around Cutler. Yet examination of the diet of lobsters revealed several differences between open and closed sites that did not exist at sites in mid‐coast Maine. For instance, lobsters at Dipper Harbour consumed markedly more bivalves than those at Cutler. Furthermore, quantification of trap densities and the number of licensed fishers in mid‐coast versus eastern Maine determined that fishing effort was greatly reduced in eastern Maine. Thus, our results indicate thatherring bait subsidies are not important in eastern portions of the Gulf of Maine, but the availability of natural prey seemingly limits the growth of lobsters in eastern Maine. Moreover, our study suggests that bottom‐up forcing (i.e., food limitation) can have important consequences for lobster population dynamics and the productivity of lobster fisheries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".