ELLSWORTH, Maine — June 17, 2013 — Similar to 2012, prices Maine lobster fishermen are getting for their catch are low for this time of year, when a low supply usually results in higher prices.
But this spring it’s not high landings of soft-shell lobster in Maine that are to blame, according to lobster industry officials. It’s high landings of hard-shell lobster in Canada.
Maine lobstermen don’t catch much in the spring and so supply is generally low. Fishermen now generally are getting prices between $3 and $4 per pound, which was the average annual range from the late 1990s through 2011.
Springtime prices paid to fishermen typically are higher than the annual average, rising as high as $10 per pound in April 2007. A year ago, springtime prices were roughly a dollar lower than what they are now.
For all of 2012, Maine lobstermen on average earned $2.63 per pound for their catch, which is the lowest annual average statewide “boat” price since 1994. Maine lobstermen caught 126 million pounds in 2012, the highest annual amount ever recorded in Maine.
Last spring, unusually warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine caused lobsters to shed their shells earlier than normal, which in turn resulted in abnormally high springtime landings in Maine. Canadian fishermen, who fish in 44 different zones and generally are restricted to varying season dates in the winter and spring, also caught unusually large amounts of lobster in the spring of 2012. Maine lobstermen are permitted to fish year-round but typically ramp up their efforts in May and fish heavily through summer and fall.
The glut in Maine and Canada last spring pushed prices that fishermen earned for their catch to their lowest levels in decades on both sides of the border. In Maine, many fishermen said they had to settle for prices around $2 per pound. In Canada, fishermen blockaded deliveries of Maine lobster to Canadian processors, saying they could not compete with the lower-priced imports.
Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News