At first glance, the conclusion of a new Atlantic States Fisheries Commission report seems like a contradiction: Lobster is being overfished but stocks are not being depleted. The warning offered by commission members sounds like the same old whine: The robust harvests of the last decade cannot be sustained if fishing pressure stays as high as it is.

Look closer at the 2000 stock assessment, which is based upon landing data from 1997 and 1998, and the contradiction vanishes. The overfishing is primarily of lobster in the early years of adulthood. Although this results in less egg production per lobster life-span, depletion is forestalled by higher survival rates of fertilized eggs and babies, the result, it is believed, of a warmer ocean and fewer predators.

And the warning is hardly a whine. Although it is unlikely that the Atlantic Ocean will undergo a sudden chilling or that the severely depleted groundfish that feed upon lobster eggs and larva will stage a miraculous rebound, the lobster industry simply cannot continue to harvest so many females so early in their reproductive lives. It won’t take an ocean-wide upheaval to disrupt this delicate balance — a localized catastrophe will do.

In many ways, the commission report echoes what many Maine lobstermen have long said in urging the adoption of their tough conservation rules throughout the Atlantic States region. An increase in the minimum size limit, the establishment of a maximum size limit, the return of egg-bearing females to the sea all are Maine practices that should be enacted down the entire Eastern Seaboard. The commission’s plan to enhance data-collecting techniques by separating inshore and offshore data should support the contention of Maine lobstermen that offshore dragging — illegal here — is the singlemost devastating and wasteful practice used in the industry today.

The next step is for the report to be turned into a new management plan. Some proposals already on the table, those that specifically protect females during their reproductive peak, should get strong support from Maine. The proposal to establish breeding sanctuaries closed to fishing needs both scientific validation and political astuteness (everybody thinks sanctuaries are a good idea, nobody wants one in their fishing grounds). The proposal to establish per-fisherman quotas should be considered only so it can be rejected — the lesson of quotas in other fisheries has been that they turn a public resource into a private commodity for sale to the highest bidder; they lead inevitably to the demise of the individual owner-operator and the dominance of the corporate fleet.

Thanks to its improved data-collection and assessment techniques, the commission’s new report is hardly the old gloom-and-doom document fishermen have come to know and loathe. The seeming paradox of overfishing without depletion is explained. With the right measures, this is one boom that does not have to be followed by a bust.