July 19, 2017 — The lobster business is booming in Maine.
Lobstermen are hauling in record catches, while prices are near all-time highs. That’s because the industry is also seeing record demand.
U.S. lobstermen have seen their yearly haul quintuple over the last 30 years. They brought in 131 million pounds of the crustacean in 2016, more than 80 percent of that was caught in Maine.
“Compared to 20 years ago, I’m getting twice as much,” said Jack Thomas, who has been lobstering for almost 50 years. He works traps off the coast of Freeport, Maine. “Last year, the last couple of years have been record years for me.”
But increased catches haven’t always been good news. In 2012, an historic lobster harvest sent prices plummeting, when demand didn’t keep up.
“Everybody points to this year as a year that was a big learning experience for all of us in the industry and it certainly was,” said Annie Tselikis, marketing manager at Maine Coast, a distributor in Portland, Maine. “What that did was give us a wake-up call to invest in infrastructure, to really invest in marketing, our business relationships. And in that one year, we changed the entire game.”
The industry made a huge push to increase demand, both domestically and around the globe. And they’ve had great success, especially in China, where distributors are marketing Maine lobster as a clean source of quality protein. It also helps that the Chinese word for lobster is similar to the word for dragon, it resembles the mythical creature and when cooked, it turns the lucky color red.
China accounted for just third-of-a-percent of all U.S. lobster exports in 2010. By 2016, that jumped to 13 percent, according to WISERTrade.