August 28, 2020 — Maine’s lobster industry last week got a bit of a break—two breaks, actually—with developments from Washington.
First, on August 19, Federal District Judge James Boasberg refused to shut down the lobster fishery as many feared he would. Environmentalists had asked him to do so while the National Marine Fisheries Service comes up with new rules to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
Two days after the judge’s ruling, the Trump administration announced it had made a mini-trade deal with the European Union to remove tariffs on lobsters for the next five years.
“We’re on a roll,” said David Sullivan, representative for the Maine Lobstering Union, in a phone interview.
Paul Anderson, executive director of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, said in an email those two developments were good news for lobstermen. They haven’t had much lately. The COVID-19 pandemic depressed lobster prices by shutting down restaurants, casinos and cruise ships.
“The overall market conditions for lobster are still in flux,” Anderson said. “But we’re still fishing, the shedders are now in the condition that they can be shipped, and domestic consumption and local processing are happening. The price is still low, but it ticked up a bit in Stonington this week.”