Comeau and Savoie: Movement of Homarus amencanus in the southwestern Gulf of St Lawrence 



187 



that the average distance traveled by lobsters from sites 

 located on the north side of Prince Edward Island and the 

 western part of the Northumberland Strait ranged from 

 7 to 10 km. As with our results, longer movements were 

 reported in the Egmont Bay area (central Northumberland 

 Strait); lobsters traveled an average distance of approxi- 

 mately 14 km (Wilder. 1963) on lobster habitat in shallow 

 (<20 m) waters. In other sites within the GSL, lobsters also 

 traveled on average small distances. Lobsters in the Mag- 

 delan Islands (Templeman, 1935; Bergeron, 1967) and on 

 the northern shore of Bale des Chaleurs (Corrivault, 1948) 

 traveled average distances ranging from 3 to 16 km and 

 12 km or less, respectively. On the west coast of Newfound- 

 land, Templeman ( 1940) reported that lobsters traveled an 

 average of 3.2 km in St. Georges Bay and 8.2 km in Port- 

 au-Port Bay; hence, lobsters disperse within the GSL, in 

 general, over small distances in inshore waters. 



Most of the lobster movements obsei-ved in the south- 

 western GSL were oriented along the coast in inshore wa- 

 ters. Although the shallow (<20 m) gradually sloping bot- 

 tom of the central Northumberland Strait, the Malpeque 

 Bay. and Miramichi Bay areas allows for longer and more 

 broader dispersions, lobsters remain close to either the 

 New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, or Prince. Edward Island 

 coastline, or confined to a bay environment. However, dis- 

 persions along the coast might not be the only types of 

 lobster movements in southwestern GSL. Movements per- 



20 40 60 80 



Distance from shore to depths ol 30 m (km) 



Figure 3 



Relationship between the average distance traveled and 

 the extent of shallow waters measured by the distance 

 from shore to the closest 30-m bathvmetric contour 



pendicular to the coast have been documented in the Mag- 

 dalen Islands (Templeman, 1936; Bergeron, 1967; Munro 

 and Therriault, 1983), Bonavista Bay in Newfoundland 

 (Ennis, 1984), and on the north shore of Bale des Chaleurs 

 (Corrivault, 1948) because a migration of lobsters moving 

 inshore in the spring and offshore in the fall was observed. 



