PORTLAND, Maine — Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree is attacking Maine’s supply-and-demand lobster crisis from a demand side, urging the heads of large cruise ship companies to buy up the crustaceans to serve to their thousands of passengers.
“This could be a big untapped market for wholesalers in the area,” Pingree said in a statement Monday. “And sometimes in a situation like this, you just have to get the attention of the head of these big corporations to get them to notice what we have to offer here in Maine.”
Pingree’s office stated that although a record catch in Maine this summer has created a troublesome oversupply of lobsters — surpassing demand and driving down prices for lobstermen — many cruise ships that call on the state’s largest city “typically [don’t take] advantage of local lobster suppliers while in port.”
The glut of Maine lobster has forced down prices so much that lobstermen in Connecticut and New Brunswick have complained that the Maine lobsters were undercutting their prices.
In New Brunswick, the battle grew so fierce that the Canadian lobstermen blocked the sale of Maine lobster to their local processing facilities until a judge ordered the business to be allowed — and the New Brunswick lobstermen were given a guarantee their lobster would be bought at $3.50 per pound or more, $1 more than the processors have been paying Maine lobstermen.
Pingree says the 59 cruise ship visits coming to Portland this summer and fall — carrying more than 69,000 passengers — can provide an untapped market for the crustaceans to help balance the supply-and-demand equation somewhat.
“I am writing to you today to strongly urge you to consider buying fresh-off-the-boat Maine lobster when the [cruise ship name] calls in Maine this year,” Pingree wrote in several letters sent out to cruise ship company heads, in part. “Maine lobstermen are in the middle of a record-breaking season. Not only does the ample supply guarantee a good value for your company, but purchasing locally sourced seafood would set a great example for other companies like yours in strengthening Maine’s economy and coastal communities. In fact, the vitality of our fishing industry is inextricably linked to the health and character of the coastal communities that entice and thrill your passengers.”
Earlier this summer, Portland city and port officials began a trial effort loading supplies for cruise ships, a step locals hoped would convince more ships to buy local products or even use the city as a homeport, which would drive commerce in terms of longshoremen jobs and suppliers. Previously, the city was just used as a port of call, where passengers could get off the ship and visit stores for a few hours, but minimal other support work for the ship would occur.
Chellie, please read Charles Darwin’s book titled Survival of the Fittest. Your cruise ship suggestion is nothing more than “glamour and glitz” for front page media exposure that you and other political figureheads love.
Where did you get the idea that Charles Darwin wrote a book titled “Survival of the Fittest?”
If you’re referring to The Origin of the Species…” you’ll find no references to “survival of the fittest.” In fact, natural selection has as much to do with genetic aberration and consequent dumb luck as it does being “the fittest in a struggle for survival.” That little theoretical quirk was the contribution of Herbert Spencer who was subsequently wined and dined by the robber baron capitalists of the late nineteenth century. And why not – Spencer provided them with a pseudo scientific justification for the rapacious and predatory habits that had landed them at the top of their respective heaps. Spencer lauded them for being of “superior ability, foresight, and adaptability.” To interfere with their quest for total domination of society would be to tamper with the natural laws of selection, as if their use of brute strength and financial power to get their way was somehow Darwinian. In fact, Spencer’s ideas were referred to as social Darwinism (“survival of the fittest” were his words) which broadly proclaimed ” the whole effort of nature is to get rid of such as are unfit, to clear the world of them, and make room for better.” In other words, Spencer saw nature as having an agenda, an end product so to speak. Ultimately, the inherited genes which allowed certain individuals to survive and breed with other victors would, in time, yield perfect humans and perfect societies. Spencer, harboring no ill will toward the masses, accepted altruism and charity as individual virtues. It’s just that he did not see in the rank and file of beings the same possibilities for evolutionary change that Darwin saw in the entire global biota. He did not subscribe to Darwinian natural selection in which nature has no particular agenda. It just is what it is and it is ever changing.
Those few who like the idea of social Darwinism may agree with Spencer (and William Graham Sumner, too), but they shouldn’t equate it with Darwinian science by putting Spencer’s ideas into Darwin’s corner. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once allowed, on any issue we “are entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts.”
I recently read the book Darwin by Irving Stone – an 800 pager of historical fiction. After his book, Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin wrote many, many more books that were never published. He feared being threatened with death like Copernicus was when he said in the 1400’s that the earth was not the center of the universe. Copernicus was ordered by the religious powers of the day to either retract his statement or face death. Irving Stone spent 5 years researching and writing the Darwin book. I had no idea that Darwin had written so much and how much resentment there was towards him because he dared to study and write about science instead of supporting the BS religious myths that are in the Bible aka the Book of Babble.
Darwin was about as prolific a writer as anyone could hope to be. Many of his book length works pertained to birds, insects and other realms, but he did write The Descent of Man which dealt with sex and selection among other things. His notes taken during the voyage of HMS Beagle do much to reveal the incredible mind and curiosity this man possessed. In our time, perhaps E.O Wilson possesses such gifts in bringing the Darwinian case to the general reader. As for religion, Darwin was a solid church-goer in his early decades, and always believed in some sort of “first cause,” making him a theist of some sort. Even though he took walks while the family attended services, he supported parish social and charitable activities into old age. He thought the term agnostic best described his religious position, a position shared by Herbert Spencer as well. As for organized religions, Darwin thought them primarily to be methods for enhancing tribal cohesiveness and thus survival, which, in spite of all the rest they profess to be, they are. One thing is for sure, as you have discovered, the churches feared Darwin ,much more than he feared or even thought about them. Thus he gained their undying scorn.
Of course, none of this contributes much to the discussion about selling lobsters to tourists, but it’s fun.
As for unloading lobsters to cruise tourists, one thing might work and wow the visitors: dump a a lobster car next to the vessel and hire local kids to row small dories alongside, dive to retrieve the lobsters, swim them to a bucket on a pulley line then dive for the shiny coins the tourists toss. How romantic a scene would that be – natives diving for dollars?
Yes, I agree this is fun and has little to do with the topic. It’s also hard for me to believe that just 10 years before I was born that it was illegal to teach evolution in a Tennessee public school as teacher Scopes found out. It’s also hard for me to believe that in this age of instant scientific knowledge that people still believe in the drivel contents of the Bible, the Koran and other religious books of ignorance. Surely, you must have read the latest science books by Hawkins and Bill Bryson. If not, read ’em. You’ll love ’em.
I don’t know what is worse, the fact that your post is based on a book that does not exist, or that 7 people liked it.
It stuck me telling people read a book that does not exist ” is nothing more than “glamour and glitz” for front page media exposure that ” … he… “and other political figureheads love.” too.
First off I am not a fan of Pingree’s, but so what. She is actually , by sending letters to the owner’s of the 59 ships that will visit Portland this year, trying to do something to promote the sale of Maine Lobster. Which is a lot more then the rest of Maine’s politicians have done. Actions speak louder then words and she has at least taken some action when the rest of Maine’s political heavy weights just seem to give lip service to the problem.
It would seem to be the smart thing to do to promote the availability of lobster’s for these cruise ship’s at their home Port and get their ship’s Purchasing Agent’s purchase their lobster’s up here during a stop at any of the available Port’s. Saves the Cruise Line’s a bunch on shipping cost’s since their getting them literally right out of the sea, and provides Maine’s lobster industry at the very least both a seasonal market for their catch’s but also a long term market by the Cruise Line’s promoting their lobster’s as coming from local Maine lobstermen. That builds market identification and branding, something that Paulie has seemingly been unable to do.
Was Chellie dead on ? Only time will tell. But until then she’s the one out their at the front of this trying to make a difference. At the very least she should be supported, and shown other ideas and option’s that are out there. Beyond that it’s anyone’s guess as to just how bad it’s going to get. But at least someone stood up and ‘Follow Me’ and came out with something more concrete than there too-too in ther hand and a lot of smoke.
Does ANYONE know how to use an apostrophe any more? Or am I just shouting in the wildernes’s? Hello? Hel’lo?
Surely you are joking?
Since you are so fond of her suggestion, why don’t you buy all of those lobsters? You must be a lobsterman or a restaurant owner because you are telling us working people to go to h***.
Great idea. When the Canadians block us from their canneries – we need new markets. How come Mr Biz didn’t think of something like this? Too busy dressing down us welfare and social security flops?
maybe the great state o maine could/should buy up a bunch of them and feed the prisoners lobster a few times a week till the prices stabilize…
Didn’t the prisoners riot over being fed lobster somewhere in New England?
Chellie, Please engage brain before opening mouth.
In a year or so there will be a shortage.
I believe you’ll find that notion was successfully put forward by a local Bar Harbor businessman and city councillor, Paul Paradis, and covered, extensively, in the ISLANDER, a weekly out of Bar Harbor.
Holland America’s MASDAM is going to purchase 2,000 pounds of lobsters during a recent port call…not much more that some lobstermen are hauling in a day lately off MDI.
Still, a sale is a sale and income is income.
Great idea… just not very original.
So buying a lot of lobsters drives up demand? I am not sure Thorsten Veblen would even consider this as conspicuous consumption.
I think the Representative Pingree has a tendency to announce that she has made a phone call or written a letter to someone, or announce that she has put something into a bill that has no chance of passing. It looks like work and progress, but really doesn’t result in any meaningful outcome. Lots of happily talk but “Where’s the beef”?
Well, we now know for sure that pingree is pro business-person, and anti-consumer. Drive the price up? For how many years have the consumer paid ultra-high prices for lobster, we are now in probably a one year lull where us working people can afford lobster, then surely the prices will go up next season. Nice job pingree, but of course making the money you do off us citizens, I am not surprised at your decisions, see ya at the polls.
Now we know you oppose free market solutions, too.