If you happened to miss this episode of Italian Food Safari, Maeve O’Meara is served up a mountain of crumbed crayfish straight from a seaside barbecue on the Abrolhos Islands, off the coast of Western Australia. It’s a casual seafood feast that typifies a coastal lifestyle: fresh creatures of the deep served with the least fuss possible.

You’ll probably be dismayed to note that as of Monday this week, it will be impossible to replicate.

On Monday, the commercial fishing of crayfish around the Abrolhos Islands was closed for the year after the total quota for the fishery was reached. Fishing ended about two months prior to the “traditional” season close. Western Australia’s Department of Fisheries publishes some excellent and very grim graphs documenting the speed at which quotas are now filled by lobster fishers in the “A-Zone” around the Abrolhos Islands.

As I mentioned last year, lobster catches in Australia were predictable up until the last decade. Lobster larvae (or puerulus) settle into seaweed beds where they grow into larger lobster. A series of mock seaweed mats placed along the West Australian coast collect these juvenile crustaceans, and the count of the number of puerulus in each trap has (in the past) predicted future lobster numbers.

Then something went awry. The puerulus practically disappeared from what is probably one of the best and most tightly managed fisheries in the world. This year’s puerulus counts are up slightly on last year but still a long way from the historical average. As for why, the most concise report seems to be here, documenting the probabilities of various scenarios causing the crustaceans catastrophe. In short: "It is very likely that long term environmental changes (physical and biological) are occurring in the eastern Indian Ocean.”

A combination of rising water temperatures, more frequent westward winds and an increased frequency of El Nino events (which weakens the Leeuwin current that wash puerulus towards the seaweed beds) have a high probability of causing the decline in lobster numbers. If it is a case of long-term environmental changes, then there is little that regulating lobster quotas will be able to do to turn around the precipitous decline.

The industry built upon the back of this crustacean may be in peril. The Western Australian government recently halved the total fishing quota, which has started another round of uncertainty amongst lobster fishers.

As delicious as a giant pile of barbecued lobster tail looks, the future of this tableau is possibly very short.