January 17, 2019 — Maine’s lobster harvest was up slightly in 2018, but didn’t match the total of the record-setting 2016 season.
Fishermen in Maine landed a little over 110.8 million pounds (50,258 metric tons – MT) of lobster in 2017, after landing an all-time high of nearly 131 million pounds in 2016. Data shared at the 2019 Global Seafood Market Conference revealed that the 2018 catch total finished at around 119 million pounds.
“It was a very, very healthy harvest rate from Maine this year,” Keith Moores, president of seafood supplier F.W. Bryce, said in sharing the data during his presentation.
Moores reported unofficial figures show the Canadian harvest was stable in 2018 at around 90,000 metric tons. In 2017, Canada caught 92,682 metric tons of lobster, or approximately 200 million pounds and In 2016, the catch was nearly identical, at 92,601 metric tons.
“As far as harvesting, there’s a very stable supply of lobster,” Moores said of the 2018 projections.
After a delayed start due to bad weather, the Canada’s current season has been steady, according to Owen Kenney, the sales and business development manager of Downeast Specialty Products, which has lobster operations in both Canada and Maine.
Because of several factors – most notably the trade war between the U.S. and China – live exports from Canada increased significantly in 2018, and even more so in the current season. That created what Kenney called a “different dynamic” for the sector, in which the processing sector had little to no access to raw material compared to the previous January.