American lobster (Homarus americanus)is a highly prized and valuable commercial species. A primary research focus for the Fishermen and Scientists Research Society (FSRS) is the recruitment of lobster into the commercial fishery (become large enough to catch). During the regular commercial season, over 100 volunteer fishermen on Canada's east coast count, sex and measure the size of lobsters from their science traps and record them in a logbook. They also indicate if lobsters are berried, tagged, and/or v-notched. Participants also monitor bottom temperatures by placing a computerized temperature recorder, or VEMCO minilog, in one of their project traps for the entire season. The resulting information are subsequently quality controlled by a data manager, loaded to a relational database and routinely used for resource management purposes including American lobster assessments.
","language":"eng","homepage":"http://iobis.org/mapper/?resource_id=2686","logoUrl":"http://ipt.iobis.org/obiscanada/logo.do?r=obis_fsrs_lobsterrecruitmentdb","citation":{"text":"Scott-Tibbetts S (2026). Canadian Maritimes Fishermen and Scientists Research Society Lobster Recruitment Index from Standard Traps. Canadian node of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS Canada). Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/77sbtv accessed via GBIF.org on 2026-10-28.","identifier":"http://iobis.org/mapper/?resource_id=2686","citationProvidedBySource":false},"contactsCitation":[{"key":6911908,"abbreviatedName":"Scott-Tibbetts S","firstName":"Shannon","lastName":"Scott-Tibbetts","roles":["METADATA_AUTHOR","ORIGINATOR"],"userId":[]}],"lockedForAutoUpdate":false,"createdBy":"09a9c196-cb5b-4fa1-afc2-3499b868b225","modifiedBy":"crawler.gbif.org","created":"2026-02-13T17:56:21.320+00:00","modified":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.582+00:00","contacts":[{"key":6911908,"type":"ORIGINATOR","primary":true,"userId":[],"firstName":"Shannon","lastName":"Scott-Tibbetts","position":["Research Biologist"],"email":["shannon.tibbetts@fsrs.ns.ca"],"phone":[],"homepage":["http://www.fsrs.ns.ca"],"organization":"Fishermen and Scientists Research Society","address":["PO Box 25125"],"city":"Halifax","province":"Nova Scotia","country":"CA","postalCode":"B3M 4H4","createdBy":"crawler.gbif.org","modifiedBy":"crawler.gbif.org","created":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.550+00:00","modified":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.550+00:00"},{"key":6911909,"type":"METADATA_AUTHOR","primary":true,"userId":[],"firstName":"Shannon","lastName":"Scott-Tibbetts","position":["Research Biologist"],"email":["shannon.tibbetts@fsrs.ns.ca"],"phone":[],"homepage":["http://www.fsrs.ns.ca"],"organization":"Fishermen and Scientists Research Society","address":["PO Box 25125"],"city":"Halifax","province":"Nova Scotia","country":"CA","postalCode":"B3M 4H4","createdBy":"crawler.gbif.org","modifiedBy":"crawler.gbif.org","created":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.553+00:00","modified":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.553+00:00"},{"key":6911910,"type":"USER","primary":false,"userId":[],"firstName":"John","lastName":"Tremblay","position":["Head, Atlantic Coast Crustacean Fisheries"],"email":["john.tremblay@dfo-mpo.gc.ca"],"phone":[],"homepage":[],"organization":"Fisheries and Oceans Canada","address":["Bedford Institute of Oceanography"],"city":"Dartmouth","province":"Nova Scotia","country":"CA","postalCode":"B2A 4A2","createdBy":"crawler.gbif.org","modifiedBy":"crawler.gbif.org","created":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.555+00:00","modified":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.555+00:00"},{"key":6911911,"type":"ADMINISTRATIVE_POINT_OF_CONTACT","primary":true,"userId":[],"firstName":"Shannon","lastName":"Scott-Tibbetts","position":["Research Biologist"],"email":["shannon.tibbetts@fsrs.ns.ca"],"phone":[],"homepage":["http://www.fsrs.ns.ca"],"organization":"Fishermen and Scientists Research Society","address":["PO Box 25125"],"city":"Halifax","province":"Nova Scotia","country":"CA","postalCode":"B3M 4H4","createdBy":"crawler.gbif.org","modifiedBy":"crawler.gbif.org","created":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.557+00:00","modified":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.557+00:00"}],"endpoints":[{"key":1242801,"type":"DWC_ARCHIVE","url":"https://ipt.iobis.org/obiscanada/archive.do?r=obis_fsrs_lobsterrecruitmentdb","createdBy":"09a9c196-cb5b-4fa1-afc2-3499b868b225","modifiedBy":"09a9c196-cb5b-4fa1-afc2-3499b868b225","created":"2026-02-13T17:56:21.451+00:00","modified":"2026-02-13T17:56:21.451+00:00","machineTags":[]},{"key":1242800,"type":"EML","url":"https://ipt.iobis.org/obiscanada/eml.do?r=obis_fsrs_lobsterrecruitmentdb","createdBy":"09a9c196-cb5b-4fa1-afc2-3499b868b225","modifiedBy":"09a9c196-cb5b-4fa1-afc2-3499b868b225","created":"2026-02-13T17:56:21.412+00:00","modified":"2026-02-13T17:56:21.412+00:00","machineTags":[]}],"machineTags":[{"key":33390022,"namespace":"crawler.gbif.org","name":"crawl_attempt","value":"32","createdBy":"crawler.gbif.org","created":"2026-10-28T13:11:16.561+00:00"}],"tags":[],"identifiers":[{"key":463579,"type":"URL","identifier":"https://ipt.iobis.org/obiscanada/resource?r=obis_fsrs_lobsterrecruitmentdb","createdBy":"crawler.gbif.org","created":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.559+00:00","primary":false}],"comments":[],"bibliographicCitations":[],"curatorialUnits":[],"taxonomicCoverages":[{"description":"Lobster","coverages":[{"scientificName":"Homarus americanus","commonName":"American lobster","rank":{"verbatim":"species","interpreted":"SPECIES"}}]}],"geographicCoverages":[{"description":"There are 10 Fisheries and Oceans Canada Maritimes Region Lobster Fishing Areas (LFAs) involved: LFA 27, 28, 29, 30, 31a, 31b, 32, 33, 34, and 35. These fishing areas are located on the Scotian Shelf and in the Bay of Fundy.","boundingBox":{"minLatitude":42.95,"maxLatitude":47.026,"minLongitude":-67.033,"maxLongitude":-59.697,"globalCoverage":false}}],"temporalCoverages":[{"@type":"range","start":"1999-04-20T00:00:00.000+00:00","end":"2003-07-19T00:00:00.000+00:00"}],"keywordCollections":[{"thesaurus":"GCMD keyword thesaurus","keywords":["biological classification","biota","oceans"]},{"thesaurus":"GBIF Dataset Type Vocabulary: http://rs.gbif.org/vocabulary/gbif/dataset_type.xml","keywords":["Occurrence"]},{"thesaurus":"GBIF Dataset Subtype Vocabulary: http://rs.gbif.org/vocabulary/gbif/dataset_subtype.xml","keywords":["Observation"]},{"thesaurus":"GBIF Dataset Type Vocabulary: http://rs.gbif.org/vocabulary/gbif/dataset_type_2015-07-10.xml","keywords":["Occurrence"]}],"project":{"title":"Fishermen and Scientists Research Society (FSRS)","contacts":[{"type":"POINT_OF_CONTACT","primary":false,"userId":[],"firstName":"Shannon","lastName":"Scott-Tibbetts","position":[],"email":[],"phone":[],"homepage":[],"address":[]}],"funding":"The FSRS is a non-profit charitable organization. The objective of the Society is to promote the long term sustainability of the marine fisheries resources through collaboration between fishermen and scientists in the Atlantic Region of Canada.","awards":[],"relatedProjects":[]},"samplingDescription":{"studyExtent":"There are over 140 fishermen participating in Lobster Recruitment Index from Standard Traps research (LRIST). The LRIST research began in the Spring of 1999 and continues currently. To date there are 289,538 standardized traps hauls, with 1,151,394 lobsters recorded in the database. There is a depth and location associated in the database for every standard trap haul. The bait type is also recorded, along with the number of soak days, and bottom water temperature.","sampling":"During the regular commercial season, volunteer fishermen use standardized scientific lobster traps to gather information about lobsters in their area. The standardized scientific lobster traps differ from commercial traps as there are all made exactly the same, with the following specifications; no escape vents, constructed out of 1 inch wire mesh and the entrance rings are 5 inch. The volunteer fishermen count, sex and measure into size groupings the size of all lobsters from their standardized science traps. Participants also monitor bottom temperatures by placing a computerized temperature recorder in one of their project traps for the entire lobster season. \n\nPrior to the fall of 2003, the gauge used to measure the size of the lobsters caught in the traps was broken into 8 size units but it was decided that these did not reflect all the sizes that were being caught by the fishermen and the measuring gauge was modified and divided into 15 units. The early dataset is referred to as the 'Lobster recruitment study pre2003' collection.","qualityControl":"Scientific names listed in the website species list have been mapped to recognized standards - marine taxa have been mapped to the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) using their Taxon Match tool. The WoRMS AphiaID has been included in this resource in the scientificNameID as the LSID.","methodSteps":["This resource was created by OBIS Canada in collaboration with FSRS. Records were downloaded from the source database in March 2013. The scientific name associated with the lobster records were then mapped to Homarus americanus and assigned the WoRMS AphiaID=156134. DwC fields were populated after consultation with the resource creator."]},"countryCoverage":[],"collections":[],"dataDescriptions":[{"name":"Ocean Biogeographic Information System - OBIS","charset":"UTF-8","url":"http://www.iobis.org","format":"htm"},{"name":"The Fishermen and Scientists Research Society lobster recruitment index project","charset":"UTF-8","url":"http://www.fsrs.ns.ca/recruit.html","format":"htm"}],"dataLanguage":"eng","purpose":"The Fishermen and Scientists Research Society, a non-profit charitable organization, exists to promote the long term sustainability of marine fisheries resources through collaboration between fishermen and scientists. The lobster recruitment index project is designed to study changes in abundance of juvenile lobsters that will be recruited into the lobster fishery in the upcoming seasons and, as the project continues, allow an index of recruitment to be developed. Lobster fisheries in Atlantic Canada rely heavily on newly-recruited lobsters. Hence, we hope to be able to predict, with some degree of uncertainty, if there will be increases or declines for the commercial lobster fishery.
","additionalInfo":"Access Constraints: none\n\nUse Constraints:\nAcknowledge the use of specific records from contributing databases in the form appearing in the 'Citation' field thereof (if any); and acknowledge the use of the OBIS facility. \n\nFor information purposes, email to info@iobis.org the full citation of any publication made (printed or electronic) that cites OBIS or any constituent part. \n\nRecognize the limitations of data in OBIS. See http://www.iobis.org/data/policy/disclaimer for more details\n\nFor OBIS Schema concept details see http://www.iobis.org/node/304 \n\n\nDistribution\nDistribution Media: HTTP \nDistribution Format: OBIS Schema \nFees: None","pubDate":"2026-02-13T00:00:00.000+00:00","maintenanceUpdateFrequency":"DAILY","maintenanceDescription":"","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","dwca":{"coreType":"http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/Occurrence","extensions":[],"modified":"2026-02-13T17:57:23.466+00:00"},"approximateCounts":{"occurrenceCount":107044}}