In Rockland, Maine, on a gloomy morning, the lobster boats depart as usual, their buoys piled high on the stern and their diesel engines coughing awake before dawn. If you ask fishermen long enough, they will tell you what has changed in the traps. For years, lobster catches have been drifting offshore and northward in search of cooler, retreating water. However, the regulations dictating where and how those boats can fish have not advanced nearly as quickly.
The story is starting to revolve around that gap. The federal organization in charge of overseeing the country’s marine resources, NOAA Fisheries, developed its current Climate Science Strategy in 2015 and revised it in December 2021 with a five-year progress report. It is a comprehensive document, more than 150 pages long, meticulous, and full of acronyms that only a federal scientist would understand. However, a number of climate scientists who have read it now characterize the underlying presumptions as being outdated and written for an ocean that is no longer fully real.
It’s difficult to dispute the numbers. The waters of the U.S. northeast continental shelf, which stretches from the mid-Atlantic Bight through Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine, have warmed more quickly over the last thirty years than any other marine region in North America and are among the world’s fastest-warming oceanic regions. The physical and biological changes are unprecedented, and the majority of fish stock assessments still do not include environmental data at all, according to a 2023 review published in PLOS Climate by NOAA scientist Vincent Saba and dozens of colleagues. This implies that the species counts that determine fishing quotas are, in a sense, based on out-of-date calculations.
From a distance, this might sound abstract. On the docks, it doesn’t feel abstract. Formerly dominated by cod and herring, species like longfin squid and black sea bass have been migrating northward into New England waters. Because the whales followed their food, which moved first, right whales frequently appear in shipping lanes for which no protections were built. Regulation, by its very nature, can only describe where things used to be, never quite where they are headed, according to the scientists monitoring all of this.
The timing couldn’t be worse out west. For more than a year, NOAA has been monitoring a marine heatwave along the Pacific coast. More recently, the agency identified a distinct, intensifying El Niño that is predicted to peak in the upcoming winter of 2026–2027. When you combine those two occurrences, you get warm water on top of warm water, endangering fisheries for salmon, rockfish, squid, and tuna at the same time that California sea lions and seabirds are already exhibiting signs of stress. As this develops, it’s difficult to ignore how frequently the term “unprecedented” appears in NOAA’s own reports these days.
The agency isn’t standing still, to be fair. In order to incorporate warming signals into long-term decisions, regional offices have developed climate vulnerability assessments, scenario-planning exercises, and ecosystem status reports. These are considered real victories in the 2021 progress report, and they most likely are. However, there is a distinction between researching change and enacting regulations in response to it in real time, and this is precisely where detractors claim NOAA Fisheries consistently falters: collecting solid data, then waiting several budget cycles to actually alter a protected zone, a boundary line, or a quota.
To be honest, there is disagreement over whether five years is the appropriate amount to put on the lag. Given how slowly fishery management plans proceed through council review, public comment, and the inevitable legal challenge, some scientists would put it closer to ten years. Others believe that the gap is gradually closing thanks to NOAA’s more recent investments in regional ocean modeling. The fundamental nature of the issue is more difficult to dispute: each season that goes by without a solution is subtly layered onto the next, and the ocean is moving more quickly than the documentation intended to describe it.
The institution designed for a slower-moving climate is attempting to keep up with one that no longer behaves itself; there isn’t a clear antagonist in this tale. The fishermen have already modified their routines, equipment, and habits out on the water. It appears that the regulations are still evolving.
