Baby Lobster
Bar Harbor - The technology behind catching lobsters is no secret, and if David Toole has anything to do with it, the habits of this cryptic crustacean also will be unveiled. On March 8, Toole, speaking at the Maren Auditorium at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, gave a presentation titled “New Tools for Lobster Research.” Using a genetic technique, Toole hopes to track hatchery lobsters released off Stonington. Several worries currently hang over the lobster industry. Although the lobster catch has been more carefully regulated than that of other species, fishermen are still facing possible damage to the population through habitat destruction, over-fishing, disease, pollutants and other environmental stresses. A lack of information on the genome, or the collection of all the different DNA of the lobster, has halted any advancement in research on the species to help address such concerns. Toole hopes to change that by collecting a larger pool of DNA sequences. He has already made progress in that area. While only a few hundred sequences were recorded in 2003, Toole hopes to have data available on 25,000 sequences by the end of 2007 with help by funding from the Canadian government.