July 26, 2022 — After over a year of historically high prices that netted the lobster industry national attention – and articles questioning whether consumers could stomach $34.00 for a lobster roll – the wharf price for the species has reportedly dropped all the way back down to “normal” levels and even beyond.
The price lobstermen were getting at the dock in 2021 was historically high, with fishermen in Maine getting roughly $8.00 per pound and Canadian lobstermen in Newfoundland getting as much as $10.14 per pound, according to the Fish Food and Allied Workers Union.
Now, fishermen in Maine are reporting they are getting as little as half the price of what they received last year – and in some cases even less than that. Despite the precipitous drop, that price is still within the norm: Fishermen in Maine, according to statistics compiled by the Maine Department of Marine Resources, got on average $4.05 per pound for the entire year in 2018, which comes out to around $4.78 when adjusted for inflation.
The pricing pressures are compounded by the ongoing struggle over right whale regulations. New NOAA regulations changed the requirements for fishermen and instituted a ban area, but a new court ruling found that even that hasn’t gone far enough to bring the fishery into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
In the end, the lobster industry in the U.S. state of Maine is largely decentralized, making each situation different from fisherman to fisherman. The Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative told SeafoodSource that lobstermen acknowledge the price is largely out of their control.