The lumpfish is small. As its name suggests, it's rather lumpy – not streamlined, like the fish that interest most recreational and commercial anglers. It isn’t eaten or harvested in New England. Until recently, lumpfish populations in the Gulf of Maine haven’t been studied much.
But to anyone who has interacted with one, the lumpfish is beloved, says University of New Hampshire researcher Elizabeth Fairchild.
“They love to come swim up to the top of a tank to check out anybody who walks by,” she said. “They’re very personable. They’re very curious and they’re hungry all the time, so they come right up to you thinking that you’re going to feed them.”
Fairchild has focused on studying lumpfish in part because they have a special quality. They’re a “cleaner fish,” eating parasites that cling to other fish. Salmon farmers in other parts of the world have used lumpfish to help manage sea lice, a small crustacean that attaches to fish and can cause health problems.
Instead of using harsh chemicals or thermal baths to get rid of the sea lice, farmers can let lumpfish eat the parasites instead.
Fairchild’s lab studies how to raise lumpfish in an aquaculture setting. But, she said, scientists didn’t know much about where lumpfish are located in the wild in U.S. waters because they’ve never been fished commercially.
“We wanted to understand a little bit more about where they are, both from a resource management perspective, in case there is a fishery to harvest some lumpfish for aquaculture reasons, and also to see how their patterns may have changed in relation to climate change,” she said.
‘A canary in the coal mine’
Fairchild’s team used data from state and federal scientific surveys, as well as commercial fishermen who caught lumpfish during their routine operations, to map where and when the fish were caught. Their project was funded by the New Hampshire Sea Grant.
Looking at about 12,000 times lumpfish were caught, Fairchild’s team found the population of lumpfish in the Gulf of Maine has increased since 1980 and shifted northeastward and into deeper waters.
“This is another indicator species, kind of like a canary in the coal mine situation, because we have lumpfish that haven't been removed from the waters,” she said.
Since they haven’t been harvested, changes in lumpfish populations are likely related to climate change. Lumpfish like cold water, and the Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest warming bodies of water on the planet. As the water warms, Fairchild said, lumpfish are shifting into habitats and areas where the water is still cooler.
Fairchild’s team, also known as Team LuMP, created an interactive map and other online resources for people to find out more about lumpfish and their movements.
Shane Bradt, with the University of New Hampshire’s cooperative extension, helped build the map. He said it’s important, in part, because all the information on lumpfish was held in different places – including Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, New Hampshire’s Department of Fish and Game, Massachusetts’ Division of Marine Fisheries, and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
Before the mapping project, Bradt said there was no place to find all that data in an accessible way and to look for patterns. Now, there’s a central site for anyone interested in the fish – fishery managers, fish farmers interested in using them to eat parasites, students in local schools – to explore lumpfish and how they’re responding to environmental changes.
“Part of what we hoped is also that people would ask questions of us and that this could then be used potentially to make the map better or provide even more information for the different audiences,” he said.
The Seacoast Science Center has an exhibit on lumpfish that links to Team LuMP’s map, and Bradt said he hopes through that, and exploring the map, more people will learn more about lumpfish – and grow to love them.
“They’re intensely cute,” he said.
