It happens every year. Lobster price is high in the spring and then suddenly drops. Lobstermen become anxious about the upcoming season. Open communication and transparency about market conditions is essential to ensure that lobstermen, dealers, and processors have a successful season.
In recent years the spring catch has overtaken fall landings in the Maritime provinces,
a shift lobster processors are still reckoning with. Maine Sea Grant photo.
In June, the Lobster Institute and Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative organized a meeting with dealers, harvesters, and fishery association representatives from Maine and Canada to discuss the state of lobster market. The two take-home messages were that a massive spike in landings in Canada this spring weakened lobster prices, but the lobster market remains strong.
There has been a massive shift in Canada’s lobster landings from fall to spring. Overall, Canada now lands more than double the volume of lobster landed in Maine and the majority of Canada’s landings are hitting the shore in the spring. These changes to the supply and seasonality of Canada’s lobster landings significantly impacts the Maine fishery.
According to Geoff Irvine, Lobster Council of Canada executive director, there were a lot of lobsters landed this spring, particularly in Cape Breton and Newfoundland. Cape Breton lobstermen were given daily catch limits to control the amount of lobster landed; that season is open until mid-July. This created an imbalance in lobster supply and demand which pushed down shore prices.
Kris Vascotta, director of the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance, added that Southwest Nova Scotia had a mass of cold water that kept landings low last fall. When that cold water moved off this spring, he estimates that the 20 to 30 million pounds of LFA 34 lobsters usually landed in December were landed this spring, further swamping the market. He noted that Canada’s landings are increasing steadily with Newfoundland’s landings increasing 20% to 25% every year. While the spring market was strong, processors and dealers were not able to keep up with the supply this year. They did not see it coming so they were not prepared.
Stewart Lamont, head of Tangier Lobster Company in Nova Scotia, agreed that Canada’s landings are increasing significantly and that the spring volume was massive. The price in Canada hit $20 per pound this year, which led many buyers to pivot away from lobster. He believes this caused a lot of damage to the market. It certainly created downward price pressure on the U.S. lobster market.
Hugh Reynolds of Greenhead Lobster in Stonington agreed that the spring landings in northern Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Magdalen Islands are expanding rapidly, while landings in Maine, southwest Nova Scotia, and P.E.I. are shrinking. He believes this trend has been in the works since 2012 and that 2024 May/June landings in Canada will prove to be largest volume months for lobster this year. He stated that we now have a significant change in the supply matrix and we lack the infrastructure to address that.
Curt Brown from Ready Seafood believes that Canada has put more lobster on the market in May and June this year than Maine will put on the market all year. He noted that the type of product going into the market greatly impacts its value. Canada’s spring catch is hard shell lobster, which produces a 36% yield to processors. When Maine product comes on, it will be shedder product, which has a 23% yield and therefore is less valuable.
Despite the concern over the unusual and difficult spring market this year, industry experts agreed that the lobster market is still very strong. Geoff Irvine noted that Canada now exports more live lobster to China than it does to the U.S. While the price paid by China isn’t as strong, the demand is high, which ensures a buyer for the product. Red Lobster, which declared bankruptcy in May, is restructuring and expects to continue to be a strong buyer of Maine lobster.
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