Lobster prices prompt protest

loading...

COREA – One by one or in small fleets, more than 70 lobster boats motored into Corea Harbor on Monday morning, each vessel conspicuously missing the same thing: its traps.

Lobstermen cut the engines, parked their boats in the bay, and stood idly on the dock, not as rivals patrolling the same waters but as a unified force.

“We’d much rather be out on the water fishing than standing here,” said Farrell Beal, a lobsterman from Jonesport. “But we’re getting to where we don’t have a choice.”

In all, an estimated 350 lobstermen from Cutler to Stonington refused to haul traps Monday in an effort to raise awareness for what they believe is an unfair price margin that is threatening their livelihood.

“We hate to use this word ‘protest,’ but our overhead is killing us,” lobsterman Colby Young Sr. said Monday from the main dock in Corea. “The price of gas and bait and other supplies has gone up, but we’re still getting 1960s prices.”

The boat price for lobsters has dropped as low as $3.50 a pound, which Young said is way out of touch with current supply and market demand. In 2005, the boat price peaked at $4.62, but last year’s price per pound fell back to $4.09.

While lobstermen are getting only $3.50 a pound for their catch this year, dealers are selling the crustaceans for $10 or more per pound, Young said, and he wants to know who’s getting that money.

“Somewhere in between, there is some gouging going on,” he said, admitting that he has no idea who sets the prices.

A handful of local dealers reached by telephone Monday declined to comment on the protests, but one said prices often are dictated by competition from Canada.

Another dealer, Reid McLaughlin of McLaughlin Seafood in Bangor, said that in the past couple of years, he has charged customers $4 to $6 a pound, and this summer he is charging about $6.49 a pound.

He said that in 2005 he was charging $4.49 a pound for softshell lobsters smaller than 11/2 pounds, and $5.99 a pound for lobsters 11/2 pounds or larger.

“I think [prices] are right where they should be,” McLaughlin said.

A Bangor Daily News article from August 2005 stated that consumers statewide generally were paying about $6 a pound or more for the smaller soft-shell lobsters and $8 a pound and up for hard-shell lobsters.

Dana Tracy, who fishes out of Corea Harbor, said Monday that if the current trend continues it could seriously threaten a multimillion-dollar industry that is deeply rooted in Maine’s heritage.

“We’re not asking for both ends and the middle, just a little more on our end,” he said. “This industry could be destroyed. We have enough opposition without dealing with price issues.”

Maine is the nation’s largest supplier of lobsters. In 2006 alone, lobstermen caught 66 million pounds.

But while the state’s lobstermen are putting in the long hours to pull the crustaceans from the Atlantic Ocean, they said they have little control over anything else once the traps are pulled.

“The only choice you have is to go to work or stay home,” Young said. “Everything else is decided for you.”

The main dock in Corea, a village in the town of Gouldsboro, was filled with chatter Monday morning as lobstermen sat on empty traps. Some still wore their rubber boots. Some drank beer.

Aside from lobstermen in and around the Schoodic Peninsula, boats came to Corea from Milbridge, Addison and Jonesport.

“To see this many people come together is something right there,” said Chris Chipman, who came down from Milbridge.

A similar protest brought several boats to Cutler Harbor as well.

“With all these federal regulations lately, we have to stand together,” said Merrill Wallace, who also hauls traps off Milbridge.

Aside from pricing problems, lobstermen said federal laws proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service that would ban the use of floating ground lines also stand to threaten the industry.

“If you think this is bad, wait until the rope laws go through,” Tracy said. “It will kill us.”

Young said the price issue is just the tip of the iceberg. As it is, many lobstermen can’t afford the payments on their boats, and several have heard rumors about bank repossession.

Additionally, small businesses that rely on the lobster industry will suffer.

“If it wasn’t for us, so many Milbridge businesses would be out of business,” Wallace said.

When morning turned to afternoon in Corea, most of the lobstermen scattered from the harbor. They didn’t go back to their traps, though; they just went home.

Young said the protests likely won’t continue because lobstermen can’t afford to give up that much time, but he hopes the demonstration pays off.

“We’ve got to get through the winter. It’s not that far away,” Tracy said. “But if one day brings attention, then it’s worth it.”

BDN staffer Bill Trotter contributed to this report.