Maine shrimp population still looks bad amid shutdown

The early numbers from a new stock assessment of Gulf of Maine northern shrimp doesn't seem to bode well for the future of the long-shuttered fishery. The northern shrimp fishery has been shut down since the 2014 season because of historical lows in spawning and recruitment and escalating concerns over the warming of the Gulf of Maine waters — which researchers have said are warming faster than 99 percent of the world's other ocean waters.The news going forward does not appear much better.Results of the stock assessment "look fairly similar to what we've seen in previous years," said Megan Ware, a fishery management plan coordinator with the Atlantic States. "We're still seeing low trends for northern shrimp. Low abundance, low biomass."