At great risk is part of our beloved coastal New England heritage, the stuff of tourism brochures, gastronomy both high and low brow, a defining cultural foodstuff, whether you eat it or not, the region's Kodak moment of dining.

Lobsters, or, more important, local lobsters, conspicuously served around here practically from boat to picnic table, at institutions like Abbott's Lobster in the Rough and Ford's Lobster in Noank and Captain Scott's Lobster Dock in New London, are in grave danger.

Lobsters support an occupation around here as traditional as farming and shipbuilding.

Lobstering has been known to be at risk for some time, of course, after years of declining yields from southern New England waters.

But with a new report on the problem circulating in a public comment phase aimed at developing new regulations from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the seriousness of the problem is in especially sharp focus. Some commercial fishermen believe the population of Long Island Sound never will recover.

The cause, besides the growth of predatory fish populations, is warming water, scientists warn.

I know that an acceleration in the decline of lobster population ranks low in the pecking order of terrible things that will be ushered in by this time of Trump, well below things like denying health coverage to millions of Americans, granting tax breaks for the wealthy on the backs of middle-class and working poor Americans, and gutting environmental protection regulations.

But it is on the list, and, here in southern New England, the new resolve in Republican-controlled, climate-change-denying Washington to ignore rising sea temperatures is going to have long-term consequences for one of our regional cultural touchstones.

"Climate change has had a significant impact on the stock as lobster physiology is intricately tied to water temperatures," the draft plan by the fisheries commission observes. "Not only does water temperature impact when lobster eggs hatch but it also has a direct effect on larval survivorship, as waters that are (too cold, less than 10 degrees Celsius) or (too warm, more than 20 degrees Celsius) increase mortality."

Data from Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts and Long Island Sound show the number of days above 20 degrees Celsius has markedly increased since 1997.

In that time, according to stark graphs included in the report, landings in Connecticut declined from 3,712,584 pounds in 1998 to 156,708 pounds in 2015.

Lobster catches, on the other hand, still are substantial in the cooler waters offshore and farther north, in the Gulf of Maine.

The commission concludes in the draft report that some new controls on fishing could possibly stem the decline. Among the regulations under consideration are changes in the allowable size of kept lobsters, a reduction in the number of traps and shorter lobstering seasons.

It is not clear, even if climate change were tamed, that new regulations will be enough to save the population. And it's not clear for that matter, in the regulation-cutting time of Trump, how much longer research and regulations aimed at saving fragile populations like lobsters will be funded and deployed.

With subsidies for the arts and research money for studying human disease now on the chopping block, who in Washington will look at risks faced by the lobster population?

This administration that ran on a promise to bring back coal is not going to fret about warming southern New England waters and the decline of the lobster population here.

There will be much more dire consequences of the Trump era, here and around the world.

Still, I feel badly that weathered waterfront shacks, covered in colorful lobster pots, likely someday only will appear in ye olde photographs, quaint reminders of a time when open-stern boats patrolled the shore on their regular rounds, pulling pots.

Some of us then may also tell youngsters about when it used to snow here, before the time of Trump, before entire communities were ravaged by frequent flooding, when global warming change was a problem you might still be able to fix.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com