Popular Maine lobsterman and YouTuber Jacob Knowles says the headlines about his industry are not just wrong.
He says they’re “twisting the truth” and making it sound like Maine’s billion-dollar lobster fishery is on the edge of collapse just to grab clicks.
In his latest video, Knowles walks viewers through the data behind those scary stories and argues that the real problem isn’t overfishing.
It’s oversimplified reporting.
Doom Headlines And Clickbait Panic
Knowles starts by playing a compilation of recent TV and online news reports.
Anchors repeat the same line over and over: a new report says lobsters off New England are “being overfished” and that stocks have “declined by 34%.”
He says those sound bites came from local outlets like Bangor Daily News and News Center Maine, along with other regional stations that all jumped on the same script.
According to Knowles, it felt like one outlet ran with the angle, and then “every major news outlet around here” got FOMO and copy-pasted the same story.
The way he tells it, the tone was clear: crisis, collapse, and implied guilt on Maine lobster fishermen.
Knowles says those headlines “got some of our customers worried,” because people naturally don’t want to eat something that sounds unsustainable.
He doesn’t deny the numbers exist.
He says the media simply ripped one sentence out of a much bigger discussion and stripped out all the context that actually explains what’s going on.
What The ASMFC Really Said
Knowles traces the whole controversy back to one place.
He says it started at the annual meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the interstate body that manages many species from Maine all the way down to Florida.
Over four days, Knowles says, ASMFC covered “so many different species and so many different topics.”
They discussed menhaden, striped bass, crabs, lobsters, tuna, quotas, and new regulations.
In his telling, there was plenty of real news in that meeting.
But instead of covering the bigger picture, he says reporters grabbed a single line about Maine lobsters and built an entire scare story around it.
Knowles notes that in the actual lobster discussion there was no emergency declaration, no panic, and not even new regulations proposed for the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery.
He stresses that ASMFC itself “didn’t get the story completely wrong.”
He puts the blame on local newsrooms that cherry-picked one phrase about “overfishing” and ran with the most dramatic interpretation they could find.
From there, he says, the “dirty clickbait” headlines took over the narrative.
Lobstermen As Farmers, Not Raiders
To push back on the image of reckless harvesting, Knowles spends a big part of the video showing how the fishery really works on his boat.
He says Maine lobstermen are called “fishermen,” but in practice they operate more like farmers.
The “crop” is legal-size lobsters in a very narrow slot.
Knowles explains that traps are baited constantly with fish so there’s always an “all-you-can-eat buffet” on the bottom.
Small lobsters, big breeders, and oversized ones all climb in to feed.
He says he doesn’t get paid for any of those.
What they do get is food and protection inside the trap from predators like fish, halibut, seals and other groundfish.
Knowles calls the trap a little “sanctuary” for the lobsters that aren’t legal to keep.
There are also escape vents so smaller lobsters can leave if they want.
If not, they simply get a free ride to the surface and then get tossed back overboard alive.
On deck, Knowles shows his measuring gauge.
Anything under 3¼ inches from the eye to the back has to go back.
Anything over 5 inches has to go back too.
He demonstrates a huge female packed with eggs and explains that by law, when they catch an egg-bearing female, fishermen must V-notch her tail.
That small notch marks her as a proven breeder.
From that point on, he says, she’s protected for life and can never be legally kept again.
Knowles points out that this system has been in place for generations, and that fishermen take pride in honoring it because they want a healthy fishery to pass down to their kids.
Marine Patrol and the Coast Guard enforce it too, checking catches at sea and at the dock.
Knowles says if someone is caught with shorts, oversize lobsters, or a V-notched female, the fines are steep and repeat offenders can lose their license.
From a sustainability perspective, that’s an important detail.
It means that to truly “overfish” lobsters in the way people imagine, you’d have to cheat the system and target the very lobsters that are the most protected.
Overfished vs. Overfishing: The Speed Limit Analogy
The word that set off the headlines was “overfishing.”
Knowles says that term has a very specific meaning in fisheries science, and the public is being misled because nobody bothered to explain it.
He draws a clear line between “overfished” and “overfishing.”
“Overfished,” he says, is when the population itself has dropped to a dangerous, depleted level.
That’s when a stock is truly in trouble and new emergency rules are needed.
“Overfishing,” in contrast, is more like a speed-limit gauge.
Scientists estimate the total lobster population and the annual harvest.
From there, they set a threshold for how much fishing pressure is acceptable.
If fishermen are at or below that threshold, he says, regulators are satisfied.
If they go above it briefly, that can be okay too.
It only becomes a serious issue if the pressure stays above the “speed limit” for too long.
Knowles notes that the last time fishing pressure stayed dangerously high for an extended period was back in the early 1900s.
That’s when many of the strict rules Maine still uses today were first put in place.
Since then, he says, pressure has gone up and down, just like road traffic, while the system of slot limits, V-notching and enforcement kept the stock stable.
He also points out that the ocean naturally runs in cycles.
Populations rise and fall due to water temperature, predator shifts, and other forces that humans can’t fully control or even see.
Many marine species, he says, seem to operate in rough seven-year cycles.
In that light, a dip from a record high doesn’t automatically mean something unnatural is happening.
The 0.6% “Speeding Ticket” And The 34% Scare Number
So what actually happened with the lobster numbers?
Knowles explains that scientists currently consider the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank stock to be healthy, not depleted.
He says that scientists at the ASMFC meeting explicitly described the population as being at a healthy level, something the alarmist coverage conveniently skipped.
The “overfishing” label came from the fact that fishing pressure was measured at 0.6% above the target limit.
To make that real, Knowles offers an example: if the speed limit is 55 mph, Maine lobstermen are going about 55.3 mph.
In his view, that’s radar noise, not reckless driving.
He jokes that if an officer gave him a ticket for 55.3 in a 55, “we’re going to court.”
But as he puts it, the news “went ahead and wrote us tickets” anyway.
Meanwhile, the scary “34% decline” headline comes from comparing today’s lobster population to the absolute peak years in the 2010s.
Knowles says those years were the highest abundance of lobsters on record in the Gulf of Maine.
Boats were catching so many lobsters that sometimes they couldn’t even sell them all.
Measured against that unusual boom, today’s population looks lower.
Measured against a hundred-year history, he says, the fishery still “looks really good.”
In other words, the media took a dip from a historic record, labeled it a crisis, and never bothered to mention that the stock is still considered healthy by the same scientists they were quoting.
Media Narratives, Coastal Livelihoods
The part that clearly frustrates Knowles most is the impact these stories have on ordinary people.
He says customers “around the world” read “doom and gloom” headlines about overfishing and naturally start to wonder if they are contributing to a problem by buying Maine lobster.
He understands the instinct.
“Nobody wants to be part of the problem,” he says.
But he insists that in this case, there is no crisis to opt out of.
According to Knowles, what they are seeing now is a natural adjustment from an unusually high peak back toward normal – not a collapse caused by greedy fishermen stripping the ocean.
My own read is that this is exactly the sort of nuance that gets lost when complex science is boiled down to a one-line headline.
It is absolutely fair for regulators to track fishing pressure closely and to warn states when pressure nudges above a target.
It is not honest, though, to turn a 0.6% overshoot into an “America’s lobsters are being overfished” panic without mentioning that the stock is still classified as healthy.
Knowles’ video is obviously coming from someone who depends on lobster for his living.
But he doesn’t ask viewers to take his word alone.
He keeps pointing back to the ASMFC meeting, the structure of the regulations, and the actual numbers on pressure and population.
That blend of lived experience and data makes his pushback feel more grounded than the copy-and-paste scare pieces he’s criticizing.
What Consumers Should Take Away
By the end of the video, Knowles boils his message down to something simple.
He says Maine lobster remains one of the most sustainable and well-managed fisheries on the planet, backed by decades of scientific research and generations of fishermen who take pride in protecting the stock.
He encourages people who saw those headlines to relax, buy Maine lobster, and “feel good about it” instead of guilty.
From a broader perspective, his story is a reminder to treat viral environmental headlines with a bit of skepticism.
Numbers don’t lie, as Knowles says.
But people who don’t fully understand those numbers – or who cherry-pick them to chase clicks – can easily tell the wrong story.
In this case, if his explanation is right, Maine’s lobster fleet isn’t racing toward collapse.
It’s running a carefully managed, heavily regulated, deeply traditional fishery that just got clocked at 55.3 in a 55 – and then put on blast worldwide as if it were going 90.
This article first appeared on Survival World.
Gary’s love for adventure and preparedness stems from his background as a former Army medic. Having served in remote locations around the world, he knows the importance of being ready for any situation, whether in the wilderness or urban environments. Gary’s practical medical expertise blends with his passion for outdoor survival, making him an expert in both emergency medical care and rugged, off-the-grid living. He writes to equip readers with the skills needed to stay safe and resilient in any scenario.
