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Research history and funding time line
by Janice M. Plante
RONKONKOMA, NY - When you cut to the chase, the plain truth is this. Two years have passed since the first big die-off of lobsters took place in Long Island Sound. And, despite extensive sampling and testing, no one knows for sure yet what's truly weakening and/or killing one of the most valuable marine resources in Connecticut and New York state waters.
At the second Annual Long Island Sound Lobster Health Symposium, held here Nov. 29, scientists gave progress reports about what they've learned since that devastating fall of 1999, when lobstermen, particularly in the western sound, began hauling trap after trap of limp and dead lobsters.
During the symposium's closing sessions, Sea Grant officials also gave overviews of what scientists plan to do next with a new round of research funding.
The field of possible causes for this mass - and continuing - mortality is narrowing. Researchers are now concentrating on a small handful of categories: environmental changes, pesticide impacts, paramoeba involvement.
But a growing number of people are beginning to believe that more than one interconnected factor is playing a role in the overall condition of Long Island Sound lobsters, making the problem even harder to solve.
"Everyone wants a definitive answer," said Ed Monahan, director of the Connecticut Sea Grant College Program in Groton, addressing the 180 audience members gathered for the event.
"Well, the scientists have not reached a definitive answer," he said, "but they had the courage to stand up here and say (so)."
Recognizing the industry's intense frustration over the lack of conclusive results, Monahan nonetheless said he felt strongly that cornering researchers into making hasty and incomplete judgments wouldn't benefit anyone.
"We would like to know the reality," said Monahan, "and we are going to see that these scientists have the space and the leg room to get the answers."
The staggering economic toll that this disaster has taken on industry was front-and-center throughout the day-long symposium. Numerous lobstermen who have been heavily impacted by the die-off participated in the discussion, often asking pointed questions of scientists and then offering their own perspectives about what possibly caused the disaster.
At the end of the day, Jack Mattice, director of the New York Sea Grant Institute in Stony Brook, thanked members of the fishing community for staying so actively involved.
"Having them here at the meeting to keep us focused on the reality of the situation and the impacts is very important," he said.
Paramoeba lingers
Richard French of the University of Connecticut's (UConn) Department of Pathobiology first reported on Nov. 17, 1999 that many of the dead and dying Long Island Sound lobsters were infected with a parasitic paramoeba of undetermined species.
Since then, French and fellow researchers have collected over 500 lobsters and performed a battery of tests on each animal, at the substantial cost of roughly $200-$250 per lobster for just the analytical assessments.
So far, the team has found "no new diseases" and "no significant pathology in these animals except paramoeba," said French, who provided the symposium crowd with a research progress update.
"Paramoebiasis is consistently found associated with lobster morbidity and mortality from 1999 through the present," he said. "So the question is: Are we dealing with a newly introduced agent or are we dealing with one of these other existing paramoebas?"
French emphasized that the roles of pesticides, thermal stress, water chemistry, and other factors haven't been "fully elucidated" yet, so he still can't say that a Paramoeba spp. is the primary cause of the lobster mortalities.
University of Connecticut researchers have performed full necropsies on over 500 lobsters from Long Island Sound since the start of a die-off in the fall of 1999.
More paramoeba work
Eastern Long Island Sound lobsterman Nick Crismale of Guilford, CT asked French whether or not researchers had been able to culture the paramoeba, reintroduce it into healthy animals, and cause the animals to become infected - a necessary step toward making a definitive diagnosis.
"We have not reproduced the disease," said French.
However, French and fellow UConn pathology researchers, including Salvatore Frasca and Sylvain DeGuise, recently received additional funding to further identify which particular paramoeba species is infecting the lobsters.
The team also has money for additional pesticide research and to develop new tools to determine how the immune system works in both sick and healthy lobsters.
In this second case, the UConn researchers will expose lobsters "to various chemicals and others stressors" and then measure how their immune systems respond.
Pesticides
Several researchers have already conducted limited studies to assess whether any of the mosquito control agents used during the West Nile Virus outbreak have compromised Long Island Sound lobsters.
The three primary agents that most scientists have so far focused on are Resmethrin, Malathion, and Methoprene.
One study, headed up by Christopher Perkins of UConn's Environmental Research Institute, looked at the levels of pesticides in the sound and in lobster tissue under different conditions, including after a "storm event," when significant pesticide-laden runoff would be expected to impact Long Island Sound.
"All samples analyzed to date have been below detectable levels (of the suspect compounds)," said Perkins.
Industry reacts
Many lobstermen who attended the symposium were unswayed by the early pesticide research findings and remained convinced that pesticides have played a very significant role in the health of Long Island Sound lobsters.
They expressed extreme disappointment over the level of study on the pesticide front and voiced deep bitterness over watching the demise of fishing communities while researchers continue moving down the tortuously slow road of getting grant money to perform needed tests.
Roger Frate of Darien, CT, whose family runs three boats and a retail lobster business, was particularly disturbed by the lack of a bigger effort to address the pesticide issue.
"All these meetings I've been to, I get discouraged," he said. "No one listens. We're in more jeopardy from the pesticides. We're losing our lives."
According to Frate, the impact since the fall of 1999 has been devastating, especially in the initial months after hurricane Floyd.
"After hurricane Floyd in 1999, we pulled our traps and everything was dead," he said. "We lost tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars. We didn't know what was going on."
And still, after what seemed to be a hiatus, lobsters began dying again this fall in parts of the sound, which brought Frate back to the pesticide issue.
"We're not asking for anything except to stop killing lobsters," he said.
Pesticide research
But the scientific community and government are far from discounting the possible effects of pesticides. In fact, the Connecticut and New York Sea Grant programs and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection recently funded four major research projects that focus on nothing but pesticide impacts.
The UConn pathology team will actually be exposing lobsters to Malathion, Resmethrin, and Methoprene - at both high and low levels - to investigate what happens to the animals.
A second UConn study, organized by Hans Laufer of the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, will assess the effects of long-term stress, including heat, Methoprene, and infection on lobster growth, maturation, and reproduction.
Another pesticide study headed up by Michael Horst at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, GA will take a harder look at Methoprene, including investigating what it does to shell formation.
And a multifaceted investigation led by Anne McElroy at Stony Brook University will, among other things, measure mortality and immune response in larval and juvenile lobsters exposed to pesticides that are likely to occur in the environment, including Malathion, Methoprene, and selected pyrethroids such as Anvil and Scourge.
Of the McElroy study, Connecticut Sea Grant's Ed Monahan said, "The results of this study should provide a strong indication of whether or not pesticide use is likely to contribute to degraded lobster health in Long Island Sound."
Money slow to come
All of this was welcome news, but the delay in obtaining funding for this upcoming round of work has proved to be extremely discouraging to industry.
"The research has just begun," said a frustrated Nick Crismale. "To our dismay, it's now two years later and there are still no answers. Some second and third generation families left the industry. Some left the state."
Lobsterman Joe Finke, who fished the Narrows of Long Island Sound for 20 years, said in 1999, nine lobstermen fished out of Oyster Bay Harbor on the New York side of the sound.
Since then, four have "sold out completely," he said, two others now have their boats up for sale, and the other three are "part-time fishermen," scraping by through other means.
"The fishermen my way are very, very disappointed with the speed of the aid and the speed of the research," said Finke.
Social impacts
Chris Dyer, a social scientist with the Center for Public Policy at Rhode Island College, has been studying the human impacts of the 1999 die-off, especially in the western sound.
According to Dyer, the social and economic impacts have been sweeping. Fishermen have lost dock space, crewmen, and value in their boats. Dealers have lost customers. The public has expressed fear of being poisoned by eating lobsters.
"These are real effects and real impacts on real people," he said.
According to Dyer, some of the more traditional means of dealing with industry disasters - like retraining - don't always work for highly specialized fishermen.
"It's very difficult to get occupational satisfaction from a job that's not related to the water," he said.
The economic strain on individual fishermen and their families has been severe, at times leading to depression, anxiety, families needing to relocate, and individual fishermen feeling like they can no longer provide for their families.
"People don't care that you can't pay your bills. They just want their money," said Dyer.
More info
Anyone with access to the World Wide Web can get more background information about ongoing research projects by going to:
http://www.seagrant.sunysb.edu/LILobsters.
For more information about the symposium, contact New York Sea Grant Lobster Outreach Specialist Antoinette Clemetson at (631) 727-3910 or Connecticut Sea Grant Extension Program Leader Nancy Balcom at (860) 405-9107.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Steering Committee for Lobster Disease Research, which organized this second Annual Long Island Sound Lobster Health Symposium, will host a similar event next year.
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