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The lobster boom

(article, Culinate staff)

Love lobster rolls? Well, now's your chance to overload on them, as the East Coast has been experiencing the biggest lobster boom in years. 

But wait, aren't lobsters, like so many other ocean delicacies, supposed to be endangered? On Mother Jones, Tom Philpott explains the lobster glut:

bq. As my colleagues Tim McDonnell and James West show, the Gulf of Maine’s teeming lobster population appears to be flourishing within a makeshift ecological niche created by two highly destructive human-induced forces: climate change and overfishing. The area's fast-warming waters appear to make lobsters grow faster and reproduce more; and the great diversity of sealife enjoyed by the European settlers has largely vanished after centuries of heavy fishing pressure — and among the casualties are key lobster predators like cod.

Another endangered species may soon be lobster fishermen, who are suffering from the inevitable fall in prices as lobsters overwhelm the market. In a few years, both lobsters and fisherfolk may be gone.