14-05-2025
The days of Connecticut's booming lobster industry are long gone. Here's what changed
Bart Mansi, owner of the Guilford Lobster Pound, has been catching lobsters in the Long Island Sound since he was a teenager in the 1970s, but the days of Connecticut's booming lobster industry are gone.
Mansi, who now throws out a few lobster traps a year mostly for fun, remembers how lucrative the industry was that once afforded a livable and sustainable wage. But now, he said, the Connecticut lobster industry is no longer viable. Instead, his business trucks in lobsters from Maine and Canada, where the industry still thrives in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic.
'There were plenty of lobsters back in those days off the Connecticut coast. We were the third largest lobster industry in the Northeast and we were averaging millions of pounds of lobster per year. I want to say back in the day there were over 600 commercial licenses between New York and Connecticut in the Sound,' Mansi said. 'Those days are long gone.'
The Guilford native opened his popular restaurant in 1991 at the height of the state's lobster industry. Back then, he would find traps stuffed with fully grown lobsters and bring them back to his restaurant to eat fresh on the water. In 1997, he had his ship the Erica Page built — a 42-foot custom lobster boat named after his daughter. He then continued hauling traps from the Sound, catching thousands of pounds of lobster each season.
But in 1999, everything started to change, Mansi said. He was hauling in lobsters that appeared sickly and would die even before getting them to shore. Other lobsterman also began reporting dead lobsters in their traps. Soon, state officials began to descend on the Sound to conduct investigations, he said.
'They were dead in the pots, I had never seen anything like that,' Mansi said. 'We had a scientist come examine some of the tissue sample and we were told that the lobsters tested positive for methoprene. The chemical was used as a pesticide against mosquitos and got in the water. It was just a bunch of different things that were affecting the lobsters.'
Lobster landings in Connecticut have fallen dramatically, from over 3.7 million pounds in 1998 to just over 111,000 pounds in 2019, according to state data. While there have been some slight increases in recent years, the overall population remains significantly lower than before the 1999 die-off.
After Hurricane Floyd in 1999, storm runoff combined with pesticide spraying along the coast — aimed at controlling mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus — was believed to have contributed to a catastrophic lobster die-off. But in the 25 years since the 1999 die-off event, lobsters have not made any significant rebound in their population, according to Colleen Giannini, fisheries biologist with the Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
'We saw an overturn in the water column due to Hurricane Floyd and that trapped really warm water on the bottom,' Giannini said. 'One of the big things we learned from that event is what the thermal tolerance for lobsters is. We were also continuously recording the temperature on the bottom for many years after. We found the thermal bottom temperature is just not suitable for high levels of lobster survival.'
Climate change, which is warming the world's oceans, is also bringing warmer than average water into the Sound. In 2023, the annual average surface water temperature for the Sound was less than the average for the previous 30 years, while the annual average bottom water temperature for the Sound at 57.8 degrees Fahrenheit, was greater than the average for the previous 30 years at 54.9 degrees Fahrenheit, according to state data.
Warm water typically holds less dissolved oxygen than cold water which can lead to water hypoxia, meaning lobsters have a harder time extracting oxygen through their gills, she said. This is now thought to be the primary factor for the sudden population decline over the last 25 years.
'This warming is having a negative impact on lobsters,' Giannini said. 'The stock of lobsters we have in Long Island Sound are part of a larger Southern New England stock. The last assessment we did in 2020 showed that the Southern New England stock was depleted. Overfishing isn't occurring so we're not removing them at a rate that would prohibit continued survival.'
In 2021, lobster landings reached approximately 149,000 pounds, a decrease of approximately 7% from 2020 levels, and an approximately 11% decrease from the previous 10-year average, according to state data.
Giannini said the lobsters that remain in the Sound fall victim to predation from several types of finfish like black sea and striped bass, which are both considered abundant. Other factors that prohibit their population growth include viruses and bacteria like shell disease, which has been found in Connecticut lobsters. These factors combined with warmer water temperatures continue to stunt the lobster's population growth, she said.
As the situation became dire throughout the early 2000s, Mansi said he was forced to make some difficult decisions. In 2007, he expanded the Lobster Pound into a seasonal restaurant, serving hot, buttery lobster rolls and other dockside favorites throughout the summer months.
'There were lots and lots of sleepless nights,' Mansi said. 'Plenty of times I thought about what comes next. There was no way to survive between boat payments and dock fees and no income. A lot of people lost everything. Many of them sold their boats and did other things.'
Many Connecticut lobsterman packed up their bags and headed north or completely left the industry altogether, he said. While lobstering still exists in the state, it's less than 5% of what it once was, as more than 95% off Connecticut's lobster's have disappeared, according to state data. For the few lobsterman that remain, most supplement lobster trapping with other types of fish and shellfish in order to make enough money to be viable.
An average lobster takes around five to seven years to fully mature and be harvestable in Connecticut, according to DEEP.
Nancy Balcom, associate director and extension program leader for Connecticut Sea Grant with the University of Connecticut, said that lobsters aren't making the recovery that researchers hoped for a decade ago. Overpredation, viruses and bacterial diseases and warming water have contributed to their decline, she said. Now researchers are contending with the reality that lobsters may never fully recover.
'It's kind of a triple whammy affecting lobsters,' Balcom said. 'A lot of different things have been tried over the years, but it just may be that Long Island Sound cannot support a large number of American lobsters anymore. Over time, you would think that if it was solely just a pesticide or virus, we would have seen a comeback in their numbers. That has just not been the case.'
But despite the industry decline, Connecticut's shoreline lobster restaurants continue to thrive, as demand is greater than ever, Mansi said.
'People love our lobster rolls, we give them a good product, and we treat our customers like family,' Mansi said. 'That's what has kept up in business for over 30 years. I still go out on my boat sometimes. I'm just not catching lobsters anymore.'
Stephen Underwood can be reached at sunderwood@
