There are few activities more closely associated with coastal New England than lobstering. While the industry is a tiny one relative to the region's overall economy, it holds a disproportionate place in its collective psyche.

It is hard to imagine coastal Connecticut without lobster buoys, traps and lobstermen plying their trade. Yet the unimaginable is perilously close to becoming reality. That fact became apparent when federal authorities began debating whether a five-year ban on lobstering in waters south of Cape Cod, including the entire Connecticut coastline, was necessary to save the fishery.

The technical committee of the American Lobster Management Board - which in turn is part of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission - has recommended the ban to give dwindling lobster populations from the Cape south to coastal North Carolina time to recover.

Meeting in Rhode Island Thursday, the management board decided not to move forward with the ban, at least not yet. This is the appropriate decision, given disputed scientific evidence. Stopping lobster harvesting for five years would decimate the tiny and dwindling lobster fishery in Connecticut. There are only an estimated 20 full-time commercial lobstermen left in the state. Federal authorities should take such a dramatic action only as a last resort and after ruling out all other options as insufficient to address the problem.

Scientists estimate that a lobster population that reached 38 million in Long Island Sound in 1998 has dwindled to about 15 million. Using trawl surveys in April, researchers estimated the lobster population to be 14 million pounds in southern New England waters, the lowest since monitoring began in the early 1980s. Lobstermen, however, challenge these estimates, saying they do not appear to jibe with the catches they are finding in their traps.

While observers may disagree about the numbers, no one disputes that something has adversely affected the lobster population, and overfishing does not appear to be the culprit. Among the leading theories are that the lobsters are not responding well to rising water temperatures and that predators, such as striped bass, are exacting a higher toll.

Some lobstermen remain convinced that pollutants, including an overuse of pesticides in response to the initial outbreak of West Nile virus in the region a decade ago, have contributed to the decline. Several studies, however, have failed to establish a link.

Alternatives to a ban could include trap quotas, rotating no-harvest zones, raising the minimum lobster size or limiting the lobster harvest season. All of these would make things difficult for commercial lobstermen, but are preferable to a total ban.

The next step is assigning an independent party to review the data and the suggested solutions. The management board expects to have the results of an independent review in time for its November meeting, at which time a decision may come.

Ultimately, a long-term ban on lobstering may prove to provide the best chance to allow lobster numbers to recover, but the federal officials will have to make a very strong case before taking that step. Perhaps the most frightening thought, however, is that there will be no way to reverse the downward trend and that because of a changing environment, lobstering can never again be what it was in southern New England.

That's both hard and sad to imagine.