Swedish officials have asked the European Union to designate the American lobster, most of which come from Maine, as an invasive species because several dozen of them have been found off the country’s coast in recent years. The officials says this “invasion” threatens Swedish lobster with disease and the potential to outcompete them for food. They are seeking to ban the importation of all live North American lobster to all of Europe.
The risk assessment Sweden presented to the EU makes it clear that the American lobsters accidentally were released into the waters there through disposal and mishandling, specifically dealers storing the lobster in net cages in the ocean, from which they can escape. This is illegal in Sweden.
The lobsters that have been found had bands around their claws, showing they hadn’t been in Swedish waters very long, because the bands deteriorate and fall off. The name of the exporting companies were on several of the rubber bands, Swedish officials said.
Instead of blacklisting all lobsters coming from the U.S. and Canada, how about a call or email to the companies to track down their Swedish customers? These importers then could be reminded to improve their lobster handling protocols or be fined for not following them. That seems like a much more reasonable solution than a blanket American lobster ban.
Sweden needs to do a better job of enforcing its own laws within its own borders before asking for the drastic measure of banning all North American lobster from all of Europe, which would mean the elimination of a trade worth nearly $200 million annually.
“This is a complete overreaction on the part of Sweden,” Rep. Chellie Pingree said in a statement last month. “We have safely exported live lobster to dozens of countries for decades, and even if it’s true that a few Maine lobsters have been found in foreign waters, regulators need to look at the problem more carefully and not just jump to conclusions.”
The dangers Sweden predicts also seem overblown. Its risk assessment warns of rapid dispersal of lobsters along the Atlantic European coast. According to the assessment, Europe imports 13,000 metric tons of lobster from the U.S. and Canada each year. In eight years, Swedish officials have found about 30 American lobsters in their waters. Twenty-four American lobsters have been found off the British coast “in recent decades,” The Guardian reports. This isn’t rapid dispersal, much less an invasion.
The Guardian also suggests, as do many in Maine, that Sweden is protesting American lobster in hopes of bolstering its own lobster industry, which is dwarfed in Europe by imports of less expensive lobster from the United States and Canada.
The concern about disease in Sweden’s assessment is misplaced, according to Robert Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine. The epizootic shell disease that concerns Swedish officials is not contagious, said Bayer, who has studied it for 20 years. He hasn’t seen a lobster infected with gaffkemia, another disease mentioned in the assessment, for at least 10 years, and white spot is a disease of shrimp, not lobster.
The American and Swedish lobster are related and have been interbred by humans. It is uncertain if the two types of lobster can mate without human intervention, Bayer said.
Despite what appear to be obvious shortcomings in Sweden’s petition for alarm and overreaction, the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Maine’s congressional delegation and lobster dealers — along with their counterparts in Canada — are right to take the filing seriously and respond to it based on scientific reality.
