What's Killing the Lobsters Of Long Island Sound?

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Argument on Global Warming's Role Comes to a Boil


LONG ISLAND SOUND, Conn. -- The trap buoys, orange and white, wink between the waves in this murky estuary, beckoning with the promise of the sweetest of New England's delights: lobster. As plentiful as sardines, they were. So much so that generations of Connecticut lobstermen did bang-up business trolling these waters for big and juicy jewels of the sea.

But not anymore. "Everyone thinks that lobsters only come from Maine, but it isn't so -- we had tons of lobster right here," said Roger Frate Jr., 38, yanking up one of dozens of mostly empty traps, salty and pungent with algae from the depths of western Long Island Sound. "We had great hauls. But now? These waters are a graveyard."

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The lobstermen here, as well as some marine biologists, have pointed at pesticides that were sprayed on the Connecticut and New York coasts in 1999 to kill mosquitoes during an outbreak of West Nile virus. The lobstermen, in fact, sued Cheminova Inc., makers of one of the most commonly used pesticides, saying that the company did not include enough of the product's environmental side effects on its labels.

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Yet recent studies have suggested an alternative culprit, one that is profoundly controversial on these shores: global warming.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/06/AR2007100600874.html?hpid=topnews

[NNadir]

1. The mere thought of the Shoreham nuclear plant.