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Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

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31–40 of 119 posts

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#31
post #2

I for one will do my part to help pick up the slack in demand. While the wholesale price has fluctuated, has there been much change in retail/restaurant lobster prices? I certainly don't see restaurants near me lowering the price of a lobster roll. If anything, looks like Old Port Lobster Shack in Redwood City increased theirs judging by what Google shows in their menu listing for a "Maine Lobster Roll" ($18.75) vs.…

Anecdotally, I am in the North East and I do recall a year (probably 2012ish) where every local restaurant had exploded with lobster specials. Not necessarily whole lobsters for sale, but their meat used as a choice of protein along side chicken, beef, etc. The price at that time dropped to like $9 per pound in the super markets. Since that year, I haven't seen the same offerings where this Bloomberg article would su…

A few years ago you could get lobsters from Market Basket for $3.99 a pound. And they would steam them for you at no charge. My wife and I would go to the beach in the morning and pick up a couple decent size lobsters on the way home for around $10.

That was a fun summer.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#32

I live in Maine. So far this year in Maine, the price is about 2x what it normally goes for. Locals say it's because there's such strong overseas demand (China, etc). The average price of a lobster roll I'd say is around $18. Contrary to what the article says "it's not making anybody rich" I can tell you the lobstermen who typically sell lobster for $2/lb off the dock are very happy with $4/lb. A friend on a very goo…

They seem to be starting to come down. They were $7/lb. at my local Hannaford's in Massachusetts today. (Down from about $12 fairly recently.) I assume that these are new shells coming in but I didn't buy any.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#33
post #29

I remember reading about how abundant lobsters were on a historical plaque in Cape Breton. From travel Canada - "There was a time when these crustaceans were so plentiful and underappreciated that only the poorest children took lobster sandwiches in their lunches while the rich kids ate bologna." http://www.torontosun.com/2016/07/27/learning-about-lobster-...

Folklore told here in Maine said that lobsters were so abundant they would walk up on the beaches. It was considered to be "trash" food and they fed it to prisoners.

http://www.history.com/news/a-taste-of-lobster-history

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#34
post #21

I went to Stonington last fall with my family. It's a beautiful and interesting place. We were fortunate to rent from a lifelong local and tour with a retired oil industry scientist and learned about a lot of this while there. The locals are very proud of the lobster industry and efforts to regulate it pragmatically but also humble and understanding that it could disappear quickly if the overall ecology changes and e…

> take fishing jobs young and may not be prepared for much else if the fishing goes away

Why not just go back to school and retrain for another career? Offshore and deepsea fishing is backbreaking, labour intensive work. I'd hope most of them were smart enough to figure out they aren't going to do this for the rest of their lives. Hell, I was a bartender once and even I figured out that standing on my feet 8-12 hours per day won't be possible after so many years.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#35

I'm in the middle of reading Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly, which talks extensively about Maine lobster fishery rights. Along the sensitive areas of the coast, only owner-operated boats are allowed to fish, and these people must all have certified lobster fishing licenses. Their licensure also gives them voting rights around regulations for lobstering- in a sense, they own the…

A perspective from the north pacific on fisheries, counsels, voting rights, etc - The whole thing is a many sided tug of war. Ultimatly Fisheries are very complicated.

Green Peace & Environmentalists would like us to reduce our use of capture fisheries or abandon the practice altogether. (Even though capture fisheries produce protein without damaging biodiversity, unlike farms. also less greenhouse impact.)

Financial stakeholders usually are perceived as wanting to let everyone fish a ton, but not actually always the case. Markets have perversely rewarded extreme overfish and extreme under fishing before because less supply = higher prices. Why catch 10x the fish when you can just raise prices 10x?

Independent fishers and little guys would like less regulation because quota systems, fisheries counsels, etc consistently screw the small guy in favor of larger corporations gaining more control of the industry. These systems grant certain families exclusive rights to 'gold mines that keep refilling', but makes it prohibitive for someone not in the industry to every buy a boat and try at it.

People trying to manage food output like this regulation and quota systems because it's impossible to regulate and manage fisheries when everyone is allowed to do it, it's a lot easier to manage with just a few companies.

The biggest problem we have now with fisheries in the developed world (if your #1 priority is to feed the world without disrupting ecosystems) is that we are underfishing in the pacific, and in europe. Although current systems with mostly financial steak holders and environmentalists in charge are not ideal, I can't think of any realistic structure change that doesn't just lead to additional under fishing, as any new groups would have an increase of people interested in conservation for the sake of conservation, and there doesn't seem to be any way to get people interested in feeding the world in the door.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#36
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that mostly we don't farm ocean life - we just hunt it, on an industrial scale.

More than half of the seafood consumed globally is farmed: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/faqs/faq_aq_101.html

Hmm, thanks - that's much higher than I thought. Still, leaves 50% hunted though, which is very high.

If 50% of the animal protein that we eat was hunted instead of farmed, we'd eat the last elephant, tiger, chimp, giraffe, etc... by Friday.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#37
post #34
post #21

I went to Stonington last fall with my family. It's a beautiful and interesting place. We were fortunate to rent from a lifelong local and tour with a retired oil industry scientist and learned about a lot of this while there. The locals are very proud of the lobster industry and efforts to regulate it pragmatically but also humble and understanding that it could disappear quickly if the overall ecology changes and e…

> take fishing jobs young and may not be prepared for much else if the fishing goes away Why not just go back to school and retrain for another career? Offshore and deepsea fishing is backbreaking, labour intensive work. I'd hope most of them were smart enough to figure out they aren't going to do this for the rest of their lives. Hell, I was a bartender once and even I figured out that standing on my feet 8-12 hours…

>Why not just go back to school and retrain for another career?

You make it sound like such a trivial thing. There is usually considerable debt and lost wages taken on for attending school, even for someone fresh out of high school. Throw a family into the mix, and it becomes very, very difficult.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#39

I'm in the middle of reading Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly, which talks extensively about Maine lobster fishery rights. Along the sensitive areas of the coast, only owner-operated boats are allowed to fish, and these people must all have certified lobster fishing licenses. Their licensure also gives them voting rights around regulations for lobstering- in a sense, they own the…

This is great, I hope we apply it to the rest of the ocean life that we farm.

I agree this seems like a meritable solution. But I think this also bears quite close resemblance to how the taxi and medallion system sprung up in many cities, ultimately corrupted by the economic value of being in this exclusive club.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#40
post #35

I'm in the middle of reading Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly, which talks extensively about Maine lobster fishery rights. Along the sensitive areas of the coast, only owner-operated boats are allowed to fish, and these people must all have certified lobster fishing licenses. Their licensure also gives them voting rights around regulations for lobstering- in a sense, they own the…

A perspective from the north pacific on fisheries, counsels, voting rights, etc - The whole thing is a many sided tug of war. Ultimatly Fisheries are very complicated. Green Peace & Environmentalists would like us to reduce our use of capture fisheries or abandon the practice altogether. (Even though capture fisheries produce protein without damaging biodiversity, unlike farms. also less greenhouse impact.) Financial…

> Green Peace & Environmentalists would like us to reduce our use of capture fisheries or abandon the practice altogether

Bans seem to work better for charismatic animals. We spend about $10,000 per year per tiger on conservation efforts [1]. Meanwhile, marine protected areas [2], of which some are no-fish no-catch, are notoriously under-enforced [3]. Which kind of makes sense given nobody is directly incentivized to pay for it.

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_protected_area#Coral_re...

[3] http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-2/fisheries/illegal-fishi...

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