STONINGTON – Researchers will rely on divers and genetic tagging methods to determine the success of a hatchery-based lobster stocking program set to begin this summer.

Lobstermen have been working for more than a year with the Penobscot East Resource Center to develop the Stonington Zone C Lobster Hatchery that will raise up to 150,000 juvenile lobsters for stocking in selected areas of Zone C, which runs from Vinalhaven to Blue Hill Bay.

Last week, lobstermen from the 10 towns in Zone C and scientists met for a two-day workshop to draft a hatchery evaluation plan.

“Our goal was to find the best and most economical way to scientifically monitor the released lobsters, starting literally from year one,” said Ted Ames, the hatchery manager and vice chair of the resource center.

The hatchery provides an unprecedented opportunity to test the impacts of hatchery-based releases under new conditions using state-of-the-art evaluation tools, according to Penobscot East Executive Director Robin Alden.

“It took fishermen and scientists working together to come up with this evaluation plan,” Alden said, adding that both groups will be actively involved as the hatchery starts production and monitoring begins.

“This group will continue to work together, there’s no question about it,” she said. “We’ve learned so much in these two days.”

Based on previous research, it is important to begin monitoring immediately in order to set a baseline of how many of the young lobster survive the initial stocking process, according to Kristin Wilson, a University of Maine graduate student working with Penobscot East.

“You need to monitor them the day after they’re put in the water, a week after, at two months, six months, a year,” Wilson said Tuesday. “It takes about seven years for a lobster to mature to the minimum size to enter the fishery, so they needed to develop plans for short-term monitoring as well as long-term.”

The strategy for release, according to Ames, is to seed lobster in suitable habitat that is near areas that have become depleted in recent years. So, even though the fishery is strong overall, he said, the hatchery might be able to make a difference in certain coves or parts of the bays.

Zone C lobstermen have been working with the hatchery project to identify potential stocking sites.

The plan is to use dive surveys to monitor the progress of the released lobsters. When they are released, the baby lobsters will still be too small, a little bigger than a penny, to use physical tagging to identify them. So researchers will have to rely on genetic tagging to track the hatchery lobsters.

Details of the genetic tagging process are still being worked out, Wilson said, but researchers likely will take samples from the female lobsters in order to have a record of the lobster genetics.

“They’ll already know the genetic fingerprint of the hatchery lobsters and will be able to determine whether they are hatchery stock or not,” she said.

The genetic code of all the lobsters found at the release sites will be tested against a genetic sample from the hatchery-reared eggs, the process known as genetic tagging. The number of matches between samples will indicate the survival rate of the hatchery lobsters.

The hatchery could begin production as early as next month.