PORTLAND, Maine — February 28, 2013 — Lawmakers are looking to boost Maine’s troubled lobster industry with proposals that would pump more money into marketing the state’s signature seafood and offer tax breaks to encourage more lobster processing.
The moves follow last year’s chaotic fishing season that saw a lobster glut, a crash in wholesale prices and tensions boil over.
One bill calls for sharply increasing surcharges on lobster fishing, wholesale seafood and other lobster-related licenses, with the aim of eventually raising about $3 million a year in promotional funding. This year’s marketing budget is about $380,000.
Lobstermen for the most part will probably accept the higher license fees, grudgingly, because they recognize the need to better promote lobster, said David Cousens, a lobsterman from South Thomaston and president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.
‘‘If we want to put our money where our mouth is and stop whining about low prices, we’re going to have to start having a marketing program that has enough money to affect the market and do some positive things,’’ he said.
Last year’s upheaval was brought on by a lobster glut that caused prices to plunge. Lobstermen last year caught a record 123 million pounds, but they received only $2.68 a pound on average, the lowest price since 1994.
The proposed law would increase license fees by nearly eight-fold in three steps over three years beginning in 2014. The annual surcharge on the most common lobster fishing license would go from about $63 to $488. Surcharges on wholesale seafood and lobster transportation licenses would rise to $1,950 a year, while processors would pay $2,600.