Haraldsdottir reported on the expressed intent of involving community members in the development process but questioned the application. In reality, representative and proportionate community involvement is rare in most development projects. The few exceptions are predominately limited to wealthy fishers who own boats and other equipment, while poorer fishers and women are seldom, if a at all, involved. Using historical and contemporary data, Menzies questioned whether sustainable production levels are possible when management plans and policy makers do not, or cannot, question and confront the motivations of maximum and optimum yields. These goals are geared towards profits, rather than some elusive, and perhaps unattainable, sustainable level of production.
Most biologists explain bust and boom cycles as being fixed around the size of lobster harvests.
Acheson argued that this model does not accurately depict reality nor does it inform effective resource management. In contrast, fishers and other industry members explain the recent boom as the result of changing attitudes towards, practices in, and legislation enacted to regulate the fishery. Their explanations champion a conservationist ethic which has emerged among fishers and industry members. Leslie questioned the capacity of locally instigated and, seemingly successful means of managing this fishery, to persist as the fishery becomes more privatized, suggesting that it may collapse as a small group of fishers accumulate more campos and thus control lobster access and production. These fishers also practice a territorial folk management system that has approached sustainable results as evidenced by level production of lobster tails by cooperative members.