It was a tough but nice way to earn a living,'' said Larry Eberhardt, a good friend of Mr. Spong's who now works at Home Depot, too. Marcel Cormier, one of the few fishermen still tending lobster traps out of Northport, estimated that his lobstering income this year would drop by 90 percent. There have been days when he has checked 400 of his 1,000 traps, only to come back with only 30 lobsters. A research team at the University of Connecticut found last November that a parasite had killed the lobsters but has been awaiting further financing for research to determine what might have weakened the lobsters' immune systems enough to make them susceptible to the parasite. The parasite in question is a paramoeba, a tiny, one-celled protozoan that targets the lobster's nervous system and destroys nerve tissue.
Many lobstermen have a different view.
But researchers have been skeptical of the pesticide theory, noting that while the lobster die-off peaked last fall, it began last summer, before pesticide spraying began. Other possible causes include last year's unusually warm water temperatures, which were generated by tropical storms that moved through the area and brought in large amounts of warm freshwater, the large lobster populations in previous years may have made it possible for a disease to spread rapidly. Jack Mattice, the director of the New York Sea Grant program, which will coordinate the research with Connecticut Sea Grant and other agencies from both states, said that because there were likely multiple causes for the die-off, the federally financed research would try to cover all possibilities. The research money also will be used to study the causes of shell disease, which has struck mainly in the waters off of Montauk and Fishers Island. Shell disease does not kill lobsters but leaves their shells eroded and pitted, making them unappealing at the table.