SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [seafoodnews.com] — October 28, 2013 — Lobster fishing is done for the year on Prince Edward Island. The year 2013 will not be remembered fondly by lobstermen for several reasons. Lots of lobsters were crawling about the inshore waters surrounding the island during the year now past. PEI based fishermen landed 28,768,817 million pounds of them, representing an increase of a million and a half pounds more than 2012, the previous all-time record year. There are no complaints to be made on that score.
At an average price of $CDN2.75 a pound, that meant a value of about eighty million dollars for the 2013 catch, about the same as the catch two years ago when the landings were eight million pounds less.
Once again, prices under $CDN3.00 per pound made the fishermen's bottom line very dodgy – to the point that fishermen refused to haul traps for a week in an attempt to force prices upward.
It was an historic demonstration of solidarity in the lobster fishery. There were rallies in several fishing ports , and lots of fiery rhetoric, as fishermen in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick joined in the strike.
In one fishing port , lobsters imported from Maine were dumped over the wharf.
But that's about all that was achieved.After a week the fishermen went back to sea.
And then their protest backfired.
Once traps were fished again , an avalanche of lobster hit the wharves, making the the glut even worse – to the point that many processors and buyers began setting individual boat limits of five or six hundred pounds per day.
Any lobsters landed over that limit became the fishermen's responsibility ,and the sight of half ton trucks with hastily scrawled signs advertising fresh caught lobster at five dollars a pound became commonplace in supermarket parking lots all over the province.
The autumn season in the Northumberland Strait ended early for a goodly number of fishermen. Prices stayed at or near $CDN2.50 for " canners " and $CDN2.75 for "markets" for most of the season. They moved upward only slightly as landings diminished near the close of the season. .
Fishermen began hauling their boats in disgust at the continuing combination of low catches and low prices.
Some bought airplane tickets for the faraway oil fields of Alberta , where they will being joined this winter by others seeking the cash they need to support their families and pay last season's bills.
Two government appointed panels are due to report in November on their investigations into the causes of chronic low prices for lobster, and what can be done about it.
It is clear there are systemic problems in the lobster industry; and that up to now it has been ill-equipped, or too resistant to change, to deal with the forces of globalization .
What happens in Tokyo and Beijing now reverberates in Naufrage and Savage Harbour and the other fishing ports on the shores of Prince Edward Island.
Governments have mostly adopted the stance that it is up to the industry to solve its own problems, that they can do little to interfere in what is essentially an international free market.
What to do about re-organizing the distribution of lobster product and the prices paid to those harvesting the resource will be the subject of sometimes heated debate at winter meetings of fishermen's organizations.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.