ROCKLAND — Putting official observers on lobster boats to count the number of lobsters has been Dave Cousins’ dream of a decade.

This summer, Maine Lobstermen’s Association President Cousins’ dream has become a reality as 100 graduate students and interns have lined up to work side by side with the lobstermen of Penobscot Bay to count lobster stocks.

“We’ve been looking for this for about 10 years,” Cousins said during Tuesday’s unveiling of the Island Institute’s three-year Penobsoct Bay Marine Resource Collaborative. “I think it’s the only way to go.”

With sea gulls squawking in the background and a breeze blowing in from the southwest, Cousins joined Gov. Angus King, Sen. Chellie Pingree, Island Institute director Philip Conkling and marine scientists in announcing the program at the Rockland fish pier. The pier was a beehive of activity, those in suits a stark contrast to the working fishermen around them.

Cousins described Penobscot Bay as a resource that annually lands more lobster than any place in the world. Because of that, it was easy for lobstermen to scoff whenever bureaucrats with little experience at sea tried to convince fishermen the stocks of lobster were dwindling. But government bureaucrats usually have the final say and what they are saying to lobstermen today is that fishermen will have to cut back.

“We have over the years bridged a lot of gaps as far as arguing between the scientists and the harvesters,” Cousins said. “This is going to give us a handle on what happens in Penobscot Bay. We have been listening to scientists say we are overfishing when we are seeing thousands and thousands. Now we will be sampling what we see in our traps.”

Cousins said the fishermen have jumped at the opportunity to bring observers aboard. He said when word is sent out over the two-way radios of volunteers on the dock, lobstermen immediately rush ashore to gather the counters.

To date, 55 fishermen have allowed observers aboard and there have been more than 90 sea sampling trips. The observers gauge the lobsters’ size, sex and numbers. The program is the first of its kind in the nation. It also involves samples of the sea bottom taken by divers and counts of baby lobsters found in the inner and subtidal coastal zones.

The collaborative program will involve a number of state and federal agencies. Besides hands-on sampling, satellite imagery of the movement of lobster larvae will also be factored into the overall data. The information will be compiled by the Island Institute and will enable marine resource managers to defend their recommendations with hard information.

“There are holes in the [existing] information,” the Island Institute’s Conkling said. Conkling noted that the state’s 7,000 lobster fishermen are an untapped resource with the ability to provide scientists with a network of real-time data.

“This is what ecosystem management will look like in the future,” Conkling said. “We’re inventing the future here.”

Both King and Pingree noted the difficulty of making decisions affecting the $1 billion lobster industry without the proper information. King said the lobster fishermen know the most about the resource that sustains them and that they have the biggest stake in its survival.

“When this project is over we’re going to know everything about the lobster. Lobsters are one of our most important resources and one we want to make sure is managed on a sustainable basis,” King said. “We need to know whether it’s at its peak or at some kind of sustainable plateau.”

King said the information gathered during the next three years will be vital to keeping the lobster resource healthy. He pledged to make every effort to ensure the proper management tools are used to meet that goal.

“I don’t want to be known as the governor during whose term the lobster industry collapsed,” he said.