The national lobster v-notching and tagging programme

Vera O’Donovan, BIM

Lobster is the mainstay of many small craft fishing around the coast of Ireland. The crevice-filled coast provides an excellent habitat for these prime crustaceans with about 750 tonnes being produced per annum.

The lobster stock is protected by a minimum landing size of 87mm (increased from 85mm in 2002). There is a strong network of associations and Co-ops whose primary activity is v-notching, which is a technical conservation measure used to boost egg production.

In the early 1990s, the Shellfish Research Laboratory in Carna and Údarás na Gaeltachta initiated the measure following successful results from Maine in the USA. The procedure involves a small notch being cut in one of the flaps on a female lobster’s tail. When a lobster is marked in this way, it is illegal to land, possess or sell such a lobster.

A certain percentage of the population is therefore retained for breeding, thus boosting egg production and in turn recruitment to the stock.

Funded through the NDP, the National V-notching and Tagging Programme began in 2002. The aims were not only to boost egg production by v-notching, but also to monitor and quantify the effects.

Together with BIM and Údarás na Gaeltachta, the industry is putting resources into this scheme. Fishermen are keeping voluntary logbooks to provide information on catch rates of v-notched lobsters, legal lobster and undersize lobster.

Many of the v-notched lobster have also been tagged, and valuable growth data has been generated by recording the size before release and again when recaptured at sea.

Observers go to sea to validate logbook information and generate additional data. The record of undersize catch can indicate recruitment and future harvest. To date, members of up to 30 co-ops have v-notched 30,000 lobsters, 23,000 of which were also tagged.

This programme will run for another three seasons. At the end of the programme, we will be able to demonstrate trends in CPUE (Catch per unit Effort) data over six years; the status of v-notched lobster as a proportion of the legal catch, pre fishery abundance in relation to v-notching efforts and ancillary moult increment and frequency data, from the wild.

With the development of species-based management plans, this type of information is crucial so that the right decisions can be made to ensure a healthy future in lobster fishing.

The co-operation of the participating, fishing Co-ops, associations and groups is acknowledged as well as the financial assistance of the National Development Plan and the EU FIFG fund through the Supporting Measures Programme.