At the 2021 National Shellfish Association annual meeting, NSA2021, which was presented on Zoom and discussed either on Zoom or Discord, I had presented a report on shell disease in Homarus americanus, which I called Epizootic Shell Disease (ESD). It was enlarged upon in a iNat Report on my Shell Disease Project submitted a month earlier (Kunkel 2021). During the post talk discussion, Roxanne Smolowitz asked me the probing question of why I called it ESD rather than Enzootic Shell Disease? I basically could not answer based on current data I have on hand but argue here that I had, perhaps erroneously, assumed that the disease had shifted north with the center of the lobster population. Colleague Brian Tarbox and I had been following a population of what we thought was a hotspot of 'ESD' from traps in the waters just outside of Casco Bay while traps inside Casco bay were not seeing any 'ESD'. I will assemble the data here that would be a basis of deciding the Epizootic vs Enzootic label and invite discussion from anyone interested. There remains and issue of why it was called Epizootic south of Cape Cod and why it should not be called Epizootic as well north of Cape Cod and particularly in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank areas which I have been surveying with the NOAA NE Groundfish Survey in the generally offshore population resident at greater than 50 meters.

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Posted on March 27, 2021 02:06 PM by joekunk