Van der Meeren, G., A. Agnalt
Norway, being situated at the northern border of the European lobsters range, seems to have vulnerable lobster populations. From annual landings have decreased from above 500 tons in the fifties to about 30 tons today. Release of intensively produced juveniles have been considered as a potential method to enhance the stock and possibly develop a viable sea ranching industry. Untagged lobster juveniles have been released for more than 100 years in Norway and both private persons as well as industrial interests have been involved. In 1990, a large scale lobster enhancement project commenced. The releases of 8-20 months old juveniles have been conducted annually up to 1994 at Kvitsoy, an island community in Southwestern Norway, isolated from other islands and the mainland by deep fjords. The lobster juveniles were tagged with magnetic (Bergman-Jefferts) microtags, and were released in large numbers, 15-30 000 in each release. The different release groups were tagged with separate codes, and can be recognized to year classes, size groups and release time. We are also able to monitor the recapture success in separate regions of the release area, and the trend in the Kvitsoy lobster fishery is compared with trends in nearby fisheries through a network of fishermen registering their catch per unit, both at and outside the release area.
The large scale project is now continuing with monitoring of the recoveries in both the commercial landings and the spare-time fishery in the release area. This is done in cooperation with the local Fishermen Organization and the Kvitsoy Community administration. The first recoveries in the ordinary fishery was in 1992. In 1995, the captures of released lobsters from the first release is still increasing compared to previous years. Tagged and released lobsters constitute for more than 60 % of the Kvitsoy lobster stock under legal size in 1995.
(Institute of Marine Research, Austevoll Aquaculture Research Station, N-5392 Storebo, Norway)
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