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Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer
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Gordon Chibroski/Staff PhotographerRebecca Brady of Portland has been doing her part to help Maine's struggling lobster industry.
After reading and hearing news about the drop in global sales, Brady and her neighbors had a party last weekend and cooked up 22 lobsters.
"We had pumpkin carving for the kids," she said.
On Monday, Brady was back in a waterfront fish market with her mother, who bought 10 more.
Halloween is not traditionally a big lobster holiday, like July 4 or Labor Day. But this October, with prices at about a 20-year low and an aggressive marketing effort under way, Mainers are eating a lot of the state's signature shellfish.
Increased local sales are helping to stabilize prices and keep most lobstermen working, according to members of the industry. But a supportive local market alone can't make up for the sharp drop in shipments to Canada and elsewhere.
Government officials and industry leaders are talking about long-term changes such as an expanded in-state processing industry that could sell frozen lobster meat to new global markets.
"There is only so much lobster the folks in Maine can eat on a weekly basis," said David Etnier, deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
Gov. John Baldacci announced last week he was creating a task force to study the economic sustainability of Maine's lobster industry.
And U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said this week she would help arrange meetings between members of the lobster industry and federal agencies that could help create new lobster processing and freezing businesses in Maine. Such investments, she said, "will reduce the fishery's reliance on volatile foreign financing and bring new jobs to the state."
Early this month, as the state's 7,000 lobstermen were in peak fishing season, the global economic crisis sent lobster prices plunging. Along with a broad drop in demand for luxury items such as lobster, Canadian processors that buy about 70 percent of Maine's catch ran short on credit and virtually stopped buying.
The average price paid to lobstermen – the boat price – was $4.44 per pound last year, but now ranges between $2.35 and $2.75 along the coast. Retail prices dropped from $5.99 per pound and up to about $3.99 and up, with some as low as $3.49.
Lobstermen who generally put money in the bank each October are now having trouble paying for bait and making boat payments. State officials and local bankers are meeting with lobstermen along the coast to provide advice about debt restructuring and riding out the market collapse.
Jon McCann hauled in about 200 pounds of lobsters Monday without the help of a stern man who usually empties and baits the traps.
"I had to let him go," McCann said of his helper. It saves him more than $100 a day, he said.
Another lobsterman who had decided to give up fishing for the winter hired McCann's stern man to help him collect his traps.
McCann said he has boat and house payments to make and will keep fishing.
"I made more money when I was 15 years old fishing out of a skiff." But, he said, "I got a lot of bills."
The crisis led the Lobster Promotion Council and others to launch marketing campaigns and boost local sales. Restaurant and supermarket chains agreed to promote lobsters, sometimes with discounted prices, and the council placed ads in publications, on television and on radio. The industry's struggles also have made national news, all of which has led to a surge in sales, retailers said.
Jeanne Sims of Windham bought four lobsters this week after hearing on the radio that the price was similar to the price of bologna. "Which isn't quite true," she said, "but it's still a good price."
The price for a pound of cooked lobster meat, the equivalent of about five small lobsters, has dropped to about $29.99.
Like many Mainers, Sims usually eats lobster about three times a year, usually...
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