WLH on the world stage

In October, the Whitby Lobster Hatchery travelled to Cala Rajada, Mallorca, for the 13th International Conference and Workshop on Lobster Biology and Management (ICWL). The conference brought together around 130 researchers, managers and fishing community representatives from 17 countries. It is the leading international meeting for anyone working to understand and protect lobsters, and this year it was our turn to take part.

Sharing our story

On the opening day, our General Manager Joe Redfern gave a talk on the hatchery’s work, and we presented a poster during the conference poster session. We shared how a community-led hatchery on the North East coast rears and releases juvenile lobsters, works alongside local fishing businesses, and is building a genetic biobank to help understand lobster populations on our coast.

“Standing up in front of the world’s lobster scientists to talk about what we’ve built in Whitby was a genuinely proud moment for all of us. The hatchery started from nothing, and to share our work on an international stage, and have people come and find us afterwards to talk about it, meant a great deal.” – Joe Redfern, General Manager, Whitby Lobster Hatchery

The conversations afterwards were just as valuable. We met hatchery teams and aquariums doing similar work in Denmark and Canada, and researchers interested in contributing to our biobank. We also met scientists whose work could directly shape how we rear and release lobsters in future.

What we brought home

We came back with a notebook full of ideas. A few stand out for our work in Whitby:

• Where to release. A study on European lobster, the species we rear, found that newly settled young lobsters strongly prefer large cobble, using it for shelter almost exclusively. The researchers’ advice was clear: release into areas with plenty of cobble. We will be looking at how to map these areas off our coast.

• Knowing whether releases work. Researchers in Canada and the USA use simple settlement collectors and cages to count young lobsters on the seabed. We’d like to find out whether something similar could work here, to show where young lobsters settle naturally and how our released juveniles are faring.

• Food for larvae. Newly hatched lobster larvae need energy-rich food. In the Gulf of Maine, they seek out a fat-rich copepod called Calanus finmarchicus, which has declined sharply in the North Sea since the 1960s. Understanding what wild larvae eat on our coast could matter both for the wild population and for how we feed larvae in the hatchery.

• Planning hatching. A simple measurement of the developing eye inside each egg can forecast when eggs will hatch. That could help us plan our busiest weeks.

• Genetics. Teams in the USA and Norway are using genetics to understand how lobster populations are connected and which males father the eggs carried by females. That is exactly the kind of question our biobank is designed to help answer, including whether lobsters north and south of Flamborough Head belong to different populations.

The bigger picture: science and fishing communities together

The strongest message of the week was how much can be achieved when fishing communities and scientists work side by side. In Maine, trained samplers have joined fishing trips since 1985, and last year they measured nearly 300,000 lobsters. In eastern Canada, hatcheries funded by fishing communities have released more than 9 million juveniles. In Norway, two decades of lobster reserves have rebuilt numbers of the large, highly productive lobsters that fished areas lack.

It was also a sobering reminder of what climate change can do. In Southern New England, lobster numbers have fallen steeply as the sea has warmed. Speakers warned that populations under pressure can tip quickly.

The Yorkshire and North East coast is home to one of Europe’s most important lobster fisheries. We believe it can also become one of the best understood. That is why we are keen to help bring fishing communities, researchers and regulators together for a North East fisheries science workshop, to agree the biggest gaps in what we know and a plan to fill them.

Thank you

Thank you to the conference organisers at IRFAP and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography for a superb week, and to everyone who came to our talk and poster. [?] Thank you also to [supporters/funders who made the trip possible].

Get involved

The hatchery’s work depends on the support of our community. You can help by visiting us in Whitby, adopting a lobster, or following our work on social media. If you are a researcher, fishing business or organisation interested in working with us, we’d love to hear from you: [email protected]

North Sea Conservation | Whitby Lobster Hatchery | Registered Charity No. 1193944