In the 1970s Maine lobsters were easy to sell. Many other states were not managing their lobster resources well, their resources were in poor shape and some of their landings were at historically low levels. Most of our lobsters could be sold in the northeast region of the United States easily and prices were good. Eventually other states improved their management plans and in time their landings improved. Therefore, by the early 1990s, it was more difficult to load a truck with Maine lobsters and sell them with a good profit margin in New England. You were competing with dealers and lobstermen in those states selling their lobsters, which were now being landed locally. Now Maine’s dealers had to start to look elsewhere to sell Maine’s lobsters. This is why it became important to form the Maine Lobster Promotion Council.

Today lobsters still sell themselves quite easily in the summer in Maine when all the tourists are in the state. With all of our roadside attractions, advertising, promoting and selling our products, lobsters are everywhere. They are kept in the front of a person’s mind while they are visiting our state. Everyone in Maine is thinking about lobsters for dinner, special occasions, parties and celebrations.

It is a different story outside of Maine. Today when you get out of the coastal New England area, lobsters are competing with seafood from around the world. The selection for meals is vast and the products come from all over the world. Maine has a huge job to do out there, if fishermen and dealers are always going to be able to sell their products at fair prices. With Maine’s lobster landings at the level they are today, we cannot expect our dealers to be the only ones responsible for developing new markets for our lobsters.

There are different types of lobsters around the world. Many of these lobster stocks have been over fished for centuries. These other countries are looking at our management systems and taking our ideas home to try to improve the status of their stocks. I will use Europe as an example. If they were to rebuild their stocks, it could become difficult for us to sell our lobsters in Europe, which is a large market for us today. Ireland for instance has started to V-notch their egg bearing female lobsters. They used to keep everything that they caught in the trap. The probably did have a minimum gauge.

The job of our Promotion Council is to go out there, expand existing markets and develop new markets for our lobsters.

Some of the grocery chains in this country have become owned by multinational companies. Profit margins are becoming the driving forces in these chains. Lobster tanks have been removed from many stores because they are expensive to run and difficult to maintain. This is a very recent trend. We need to get out there and make sure that lobsters remain available to these consumers. We need to maintain our current market share in some areas and try to expand it in other areas.

These are many regions of our country where it can be difficult to find Maine lobsters, even if you are looking for them. We need to get out there and have more consumers looking for and buying Maine lobsters for meals, special occasions, parties and celebrations around the world.

The federal government has promotion funds available for us to apply for to help us create new markets around the world. Without matching industry funds, we get nothing.

Maine’s fishermen need to provide the Maine Lobster Promotion Council with the financial support they need so we can get out there and look for new markets around the world.

Creating more demand for our product will help guarantee that Maine’s fishermen will always be able to sell their products and the greater demand may help to create better prices for their products.

Maine’s landings have grown to the point where this state only consumes a very small portion of what we produce.

You know there’s a big world out there and we need to continue to be a player. Lobster exports have increased 65 percent since 1995 (the year the MLPC/ASI became involved in the Market Access Program).

Our efforts are working, but we would be negligent if we didn’t continue to work on expanding existing overseas markets. We need to continue to promote Maine lobster in new markets and prevent loss of market share to other competing products. If we don’t do it, another commodity group will.

Neither should we overlook the importance of our frozen products.

Maine is the only state in the United States that is processing lobster products. The MLPC promotes both live and frozen lobster in the United States and overseas. While Canada is a direct competitor, they also purchase Maine product for processing.

The Maine Lobster Promotion Council is by far the most effective way to promote our products all over the world.

On our behalf, they are able to market Maine lobster and respond to negative press from other interests like animal rights groups, conservation groups, etc. How many of Maine’s lobster harvesters have time to do this on their own? How in the world can we compete without the MLPC?

W. William Anderson of Lubec was the chairman of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council for seven years.