The American lobster is a symbol of Maine, central to the state’s ethos and economy.

Its image appears on license plates, restaurant signs and clothing. It is sold alive, with its claws banded shut, on docks, at highway rest stops and supermarkets. Cooked, it is served everywhere from seaside shacks to the finest restaurants.

Lobster attracts tourists, feeds locals and is a lifeblood for coastal towns.

Its importance has even swelled in recent years as lobsters have been caught in record numbers. Lobster landings – or the amount of lobster caught – have risen fivefold in the past three decades. Lobster has become a half-billion-dollar industry in Maine. And the reason for the boom, according to scientists, is climate change.

The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s waters, rising at three times the global average. That warming has created optimal conditions for lobsters to reproduce and survive into adulthood.

“It’s actually been really positive for us. We’ve seen probably the most favourable environmental conditions for lobsters ever,” said Patrice McCarron, the executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, which represents more than 1,000 members of the state’s lobster industry.

But while the warming waters have resulted in a lobster bonanza, scientists say climate change will ultimately bring a bust to the boom: As the Gulf of Maine continues to warm, that temperature sweet spot for lobsters will continue to move north. That could result in a similar spike in lobsters in Canada, but leave Maine’s industry broken.

According to a report released earlier this year from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) in Portland, while the lobster population has risen over 500% along Maine’s coast over the past 30 years, the population is expected to drop by between 40% and 62% by 2050.

Climate change has already hit lobster populations in states south of Maine, seeing once-robust lobster fisheries in Massachusetts, Rhode Island – and even Connecticut, New Jersey and New York – decline.

Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at GMRI, says it is tempting to think that lobster populations are migrating with temperature, but that is not the case.

“It’s more that the populations that are here can become more or less productive. So lobsters in southern New England, they just can’t produce baby lobsters at the same rate our lobsters can and they have higher mortality, so fewer of them survive to reproduce,” he said.

While a drop of 40% to 62% would return Maine to levels of lobster landings it saw before the boom, the decades after 2050 could spell disaster.

“If we don’t get carbon under control and we’re looking at three degrees [celsius] of warming by the end of the century, Maine starts to feel like best case Rhode Island and worst case New Jersey,” said Pershing. “And nobody is putting lobsters on license plates in New Jersey.”

Climate change is politically divisive in America, where the president has called it a hoax and said he did not believe his own government’s national climate assessment, which found that climate change could greatly damage the US economy. But in places like Stonington, a tiny lobster town in southern Maine on remote, wind-lashed Deer Isle, climate change is something one can see and feel.

“We can see the effects. We can see different species coming up in the traps,” said Genevieve McDonald, a Stonington lobsterman. “Climate change is real. If you work on the water you can see it. Data is real, science is real, temperature is real.”

McDonald was early in her lobstering career when the number of lobsters soared in the waters off Stonington.

“All of the sudden we had lobsters everywhere, places there were never lobsters before,” she said. “In every nook and cranny and crevice and type of bottom there were lobsters. It was awesome.”

It isn’t just the lobsters and the foreign species showing up off Stonington’s shores that make residents think of climate change. On Tuesday, storm surge saw cars and trucks navigating through seaweed and sea water on the narrow, low-lying causeway, the only road leading off Deer Isle.

In Stonington, lobsters are life. The town has pulled more lobster from the frigid waters than any other Maine port in recent years. Nearly everybody seems to work in the lobster industry or have a role supporting the fishermen.

“We live in a lobstocracy,” says Carla Guenther, chief scientist at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries in Stonington. “It’s central to our politics, our social structure, everything.”

Losing the industry would be devastating. Previously, Stonington had other fisheries – such as for groundfish like cod, haddock and flounder. Ted Ames, a retired Stonington fisherman, saw all of those fisheries collapse over the decades, but when they did, fishermen always turned to something else to make a living. Today, lobsters are everything.

“If you’re stuck with one fishery, you’re good until it hiccups and then you’re out of business. This time around there isn’t any other option,” he said.

Maine and its lobstermen have worked hard to conserve the lobster population and take pride in their efforts. The number of lobstering licenses is capped and the number of traps is restricted. Lobster licenses are only issued to owner-operators, meaning that there is no industrial lobstering. Small lobsters, big lobsters and egg-bearing females are all tossed back. Traps are equipped with a biodegradable ring that eventually disintegrates, allowing lobsters to escape and survive in case a trap is lost on the ocean’s floor.

But despite their conservation efforts, the fate of the fishery is probably out of the hands of lobstermen.

“There’s only so much our lobstermen can do,” said GMRIs Pershing. “If the rest of the world doesn’t get a handle on carbon, the coast of Maine is going to look really different in 2080.”