ROCKPORT (AP) – The lobster harvest in Maine may decline this year and next, a survey of lobster larvae suggests.

Scientists at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum told lobstermen that the number of larvae found along the Maine coast has been down for a several years. The annual forum at the Samoset Resort ended Saturday.

Scientists also said a lobster shell disease that has devastated stocks of the shellfish in southern New England has spread as far north as the Canada-Maine border, but has not yet shown up in Maine in large numbers.

Those findings are important to Maine’s $200 million lobster industry, which accounts for about 70 percent of the state’s fishing revenue. The annual lobster catch in recent years is more than double what it was 15 years ago.

Lewis Incze, a senior research scientist at the University of Southern Maine’s Bioscience Research Institute, said even though the number of lobster larvae off Maine has been relatively low, it’s difficult to say what that means for the adult population.

Incze said his projections show that the number of legal-size lobsters could begin declining this year and continue falling for a year or two. At the same time, he said, the decline should have been noticed last year and was not.

Scientists told lobstermen that little is known about the lobster shell disease that first showed up in Long Island Sound, causing that fishery to collapse in 1997.

The disease has since spread. In Rhode Island, more than 30 percent of the catch has shell disease, said Kathy Castro of the University of Rhode Island.

In Maine, less than 0.1 percent of the catch is affected, said Carl Wilson, lobster biologist for the state Department of Marine Resources. But it is unknown what the future holds.

“We can’t look to the south without seeing storm clouds,” Wilson said.

Researchers are now focusing on environmental factors that might make lobsters more susceptible to bacteria.

One new study has found an apparent connection to plastic and epoxy residues in the sediment of the ocean bottom that can mimic lobster hormones and affect their health.

Castro said the big question is: “Why now?”

AP-ES-03-07-04 1230EST