ABSTRACT. Lagoons are highly productive coastal features that provide a range of natural services that society values. Their setting within the coastal landscape leaves them especially vulnerable to profound physical, ecological, and associated societal disturbance from global climate change. Expected shifts in physical and ecological characteristics range from changes in flushing regime, freshwater inputs, and water chemistry to complete inundation and loss and the concomitant loss of natural and human communities. Therefore, managing coastal lagoons in the context of global climate change is critical. Although management approaches will vary depending on local conditions and cultural norms, all management scenarios will need to be nimble and to make full use of the spectrum of values through which society views these unique ecosystems. We propose that this spectrum includes pragmatic, scholarly, aesthetic, and tacit categories of value. Pragmatic values such as fishery or tourism revenue are most easily quantified and are therefore more likely to be considered in management strategies. In contrast, tacit values such as a sense of place are more difficult to quantify and therefore more likely to be left out of explicit management justifications. However, tacit values are the most influential to stakeholder involvement because they both derive from and shape individual experiences and beliefs. Tacit values underpin all categories of social values that we describe and can be expected to have a strong influence over human behavior. The articulation and inclusion of the full spectrum of values, especially tacit values, will facilitate and support nimble adaptive management of coastal lagoon ecosystems in the context of global climate change.

Relationships between lobster postlarval supply and benthic recruitment were evaluated within and between oceanographically distinct segments of the range of the American lobster. Postlarvae (PL) were sampled by neuston nets in western Rhode Island Sound and the western Gulf of Maine, USA, from June to September 1989–95. Benthic lobsters were sampled in sublittoral cobble habitat by using a diver-operated airlift at the end of the settlement season. Average annual recruitment densities of young-of-year (YOY) lobsters ranged from 0.3 to 1.7 m-2. YOY recruitment was positively correlated between areas. Integrated seasonal abundance of postlarvae was often much greater in Rhode Island than Maine, but production estimates (PL 1000 m-2 season-1), calculated from moult cycle stages and temperature-dependent growth rates, differed by a factor of <0.5. PL production was positively correlated between areas and explained ≥81% of the annual variation in recruitment in each area and 90% for the two areas combined. In Maine, among-site differences in YOY recruitment persisted for a year after settlement and then began to lessen, at least in part because larger individuals moved into areas of initially lower recruitment

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Some of the relationships between a lobster (H omarus americanus) and the dimensions of its shelter have been examined. Field studies showed that lobsters generally occupied shelters in which the height was less than the width, and that there was a correlation between lobster size and shelter size. In the laboratory lobsters chose low profile shelters when given a choice of flat (height= ~ width) versus square (height= width) profile openings. "Back doors" were often present in the field, and laboratory experiments suggested that some sort of constriction before the rear opening was necessary to qualify it as a back door. The amount of time spent in either opaque or transparent shelter under bright, dim, and dark illumination was measured. In bright and dim light with opaque shelter, lobsters spent significantly more time in a shelter than in the other treatments, showing darkness to be a major factor in shelter selection. Shelters are excavated by pushing sand or gravel with the third maxillipeds in a bulldozing motion or by digging with the first two or three pairs of walking legs, followed by a vigorous fanning of the pleopods.

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