ELLSWORTH, Maine — The recent dispute between Canadian lobster fishermen and their American counterparts has left industry experts from both sides of the border calling for increased understanding about each other’s fishing seasons and seeking to work together to increase demand for the shared fishery.
That may be the only way to avoid incidents — such as the protests and blockade of Maine lobster at New Brunswick processors this month — in the wake of another abnormal season, they said.
The deal reached Saturday between a New Brunswick lobstermen’s union, processors and the province to increase the price of the fishermen’s catch by about 50 cents a pound — half from the processors, the other half in the form of a subsidy from the union — has resulted in a return to relative calm in a season one expert termed “a perfect storm.”
The deal capped a week or so of protests by the Canadian fishermen, who blockaded the delivery of Maine lobster to the processing plants and said the historically low price of Maine lobster after the huge glut was driving down prices in Canada and stealing their livelihood.
In return for stopping the protests, the Maritime Fishermen’s Union locked in a half-dollar price disparity between the price processing plants will pay for Canadian lobster versus its Maine counterpart. The deal also guarantees the processors will buy all lobsters landed by the fishermen in the 10-week season along the Northumberland Strait and the southern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Maine lobstermen depend on New Brunswick processors to buy their lobster, especially the soft-shell haul that can’t survive long-distance shipping.
Industry insiders say this is the first time in recent memory there has been a price disparity in payment from processors to Maine and Canadian harvesters. After all, they’re selling the same animal.
Because it is unusual, the gap in price caught some Maine lobstermen by surprise Monday.
“We thought [the deal] would be a good thing, because we thought we’d get more or less the same price, like always,” said Billy-Bob Faulkingham, a member of the Winter Harbor Lobster Co-Op. “That doesn’t seem to be the case.”
Faulkingham said Monday the co-op saw its price go up just 15 cents, up to about $2.50 per pound, compared with the Canadians’ reported $3.
“It’s a tough industry in a year when there’s a lot of supply,” he said. “That being said, there’s no reason a Canadian should make more than us.”
Unions and seasons
In Maine, it may seem odd that lobstermen collectively could negotiate a price for their haul. Lobstermen here are used to catching as much product as they can and taking the price determined by the market. If it’s too low, they can always stay home.
Robert Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute — an Orono-based group that supports the lobster industry, working with harvesters, processors, dealers and the like from Long Island Sound to Newfoundland and Labrador — said that in Canada, it’s different.
The major differences, he said, are the presence of fishermen’s unions and the system for dividing the fishery into zones, each with its own season. In Maine, lobster is a year-round fishery.
Fishermen in the maritime provinces are represented by two unions. The Maritime Fishermen’s Union and The Fish, Food and Allied Workers represent all fishermen in Newfoundland. About one-third of Canada’s fishermen are unionized, according to Geoff Irvine of the Lobster Council of Canada.
That’s not that many union members, Irvine said, but the U.S. hasn’t seen that ratio of union to nonunion workers since the 1940s. In the private sector, union membership in the U.S. is at just 6.9 percent, according to 2010 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Irvine said the Newfoundland union regularly negotiates for prices, but the Maritime Fishermen’s Union doesn’t, even though it has the right to do so. This season is an anomaly, he said.
“They haven’t used those rights in many years,” he said.
Efforts to contact the Maritime Fishermen’s Union on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
The protesting fishermen harvest in Lobster Fishing Area 25. The season there started Monday and lasts for 10 weeks. Facing declining prices, a short window of opportunity and the onslaught of supply from Maine, the fishermen felt forced to take action, Bayer said. When they did, their union provided them a means to negotiate a more favorable price — which Maine fishermen lack.
“That’s their entire livelihood in 10 weeks,” he said. “What they don’t make in 10 weeks, that’s it. They have no other opportunity.”
‘A fluke of nature’
Irvine, with the Lobster Council of Canada, played down the role of the union in the volatile lobster season. He said it doesn’t make a lot of the difference between Maine and Canadian fisheries. He said the real contributing factors in the protests, blockades and price deal is the “perfect storm” of factors including Maine’s early and heavy arrival of soft-shell lobsters and the timing of Maine’s glut.
“The story is a fluke of nature caused an international incident that was big, and not normal,” he said. “The normal course of affairs is that we work really well together.”
Irvine said Maine’s early molt, and resultant early season, arrived right as New Brunswick processors were shutting down and refitting before the normal schedule. By the time the plants opened, the damage was done.
“Once our plants were opened and refit, the price had collapsed because [Maine lobstermen] had no place to send the lobster,” he said.
In normal conditions, Maine and Canadian seasons complement each other, Irvine said, with Mainers landing the bulk of their catch when Canadians are slow, and vice versa. This year, Mainers were ready to ship lobster to processors as early as May. Normally the push doesn’t come until August, Irvine said.
“They came really early,” he said. “Still, we should have predicted it. Everyone knew it was going to happen. We need to work a lot closer on that.”
Irvine’s counterparts in Maine agreed that the two fisheries likely will learn a lot from this month’s “international incident.”
“I think that in the last week-plus, we in Maine and in Canada have learned a lot about how our fisheries work, and how they work together and how they’re different,” said Annie Tselikis, education coordinator for the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.
For future reference
Tselikis said there’s no getting around the lower price for Maine lobster compared with New Brunswick’s landings, or for that matter, any of the other problems associated with this bizarre lobster season.
“In the short term, I don’t think there are any great magic-wand solutions that we can put into place right now,” she said.
The oversupply may be acute this season, but the general trend in landings has been up in Maine for decades, Tselikis said. From 2007 to 2011 alone, landings went up by 30 million pounds per year.
Maine and Canada both need to address the demand side of the market, she said. That means general product marketing and creating additional processing opportunities in Maine.
“We are in a position where we have a lot more work to do to be educated about the function of our markets, and to figure out how to increase the demand for our products,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Follow Mario Moretto on Twitter at @riocarmine.
So, the next time they bring under priced lobsters to Youngs Lobster Pound in the middle of the night are these same people going to support our fisherman?
You should get your facts straight before you go accusing people of something that isn’t true. Young’s has been paying their fishermen .25 cents more than the average price all summer long, Young’s makes sure that their fishermen are taken care of. If you think you know everything, why don’t you go to Young’s next time they have a truck down there and see what they are actually doing. Or go to Young’s and ask them yourself. And another thing is, Canadian lobsters are more expensive than Maine lobsters, why would they want to buy them? You can ask me or any other one of us fishermen for Young’s and see how well we are treated by them, they buy our lobsters even if they don’t have room for them and or a market for them, we have never been shut off by them, and I will never sell anywhere else.
I still remember years ago when Youngs brought in a tractor trailor load of Canadian lobster, then they offered the local fishermen like a dollar a pound, my uncle and many others pulled their gear and gave their lobster away to freinds and family for free.
The only thing to say for the deal is it’s stupid. Sorry but that is the truth. You cannot control the price that people are willing to pay, no matter what. Unless of course you create a police state, then you do what you want.
It’s about the market and the abundance of soft shell lobsters that brought the price down. You must not be a fishermen because you would have a little more sympathy if you are. You are talking about our livelyhood here. I do not find this matter stupid – I find it scary for all fishermen. This could result in a trickle down effect. This doesn’t only effect the lobstermen, this effects all Mainers.
I was talking with the wife about this situation today, and about the Canadian judge placing an injunction so Maine lobsters could be continued to be delivered to the processors. My first words to her were you watch and see the political powers are now at work to find ways to compensate the “poor” Canadian lobsterman. This cost will in short order be
passed on to the Maine lobsterman and eventually on to other non-Canadian consumers of Maine lobster. This is the government hand (influence) that destroys free market and
the economies globally. If left alone the Canadians would have in time experienced their own boom, and the U.S not, but to penalize is poor economics. The United States for example pays hefty fines for subsidizing its industries (e.g. cotton) competing in the global marketplace all while other nation-states can do whatever they wish. This stinks to high heaven.
Canadians ruin everything tbh.
with this kind of an agreement, buying maine lobster for 50cents less a pound then their canadian lobstermen, don`t the maine lobster fishermen feel slighted?
Maybe it should work the same on this side of the border, All products imported from canada should be sold here at a reduced price, 20% discount.
And are the processors going to pass on the savings to the consumer when the products are imported.
Of course not, the maine lobstermen need to boycott the processoruntil they get the same rate.
a maine lobstermen co-op needs to be formed and build another plant here to process their own lobster. And the heck with the canadians that don`t treat them as equals
The “Perfect Storm” metaphor has been used to death. For heavens sake can’t reporters come up with a new phrase to describe an alignment of events that in sum create havoc? While we’re at it, I wish people would stop using the word “awesome” for situations that are ordinary. Good heavens, they’ve ruined what was once a great word that had meaning, and did it with a perfect storm of frivolous utilizations!
This IS a free market in action! The Canadian fisherman had the guts to stand up for themselves. Maybe the Maine lobstermen would have been wise to follow the model of their Canadian brothers and held out for better prices. From what I’ve seen in the past, the US crews are more likely to sink or shoot each other rather than cooperate for mutual benefit.
The problem with that is the Canadians can be “bailed out” when they are not making any money because they are unionized where Maine lobstermen are not. Think about how many lobstermen along the northeast there is and compare it to what you said about how they are more likely to sink or shoot each other rather than cooperate for mutual benefit. Those numbers are very small. We are trying to come together but, we also needed to have the backing from the Lobster Institute and the associations so we could get further in our fight.
After all the layers are peeled away, what lies at the heart of the glut is warmer oceanic temperatures. I have no idea what can be done to prevent a recurrence of this current situation, but the time to address it is yesterday. http://www.theforecaster.net/node/123131
OK OK Here is my OPINION for what it is worth as a commercial lobstermen running my own boat and being impacted directly by this. First, we are MAINERS and we are tough and will survive this too! Changes have to be made to our industry in the way we process our lobsters. This won’t be an immediate solution as it will take time but it is happening. As we speak as a new processor has just opened in Tenent’s Harbor. The problem lies with our dependance on a foreigh country for our ability to process the meat in our lobsters. This is also out sourcing jobs that could be used here in Maine! While we are building up our own ability to process, perhaps we should look into hiring a few U.S. based processing ships to take the pressure off. Our lobsters are worth as much as Canadian lobsters (more in my opinion) so why continue to GIVE them to Canada when they obviously don’t want them?!?! Please remember Dear Readers that the Canadian Government subsidizes their fishermen and they are paid all year even when they aren’t fishing. Maine fishermen are truly dependant on themselves and what they can harvest in the SHORT season that they fish. My season is 16 weeks and in that time I make all the money that I will live on all year. After the 16 weeks is over the lobsters have moved to water off shore and my boat is too small to chase them out there safely. I live on an island so my job opportunities are VERY limited after the season has ended. We don’t have McDonald’s or Walmart or any other businesses to offer jobs to us to help take up the slack in a poor year. We are tough though and most of us are already planning for winter and filling our freezers and pantries for the cold winter months when we are stuck in the shop repairing our traps with hopes for a better season to come next year.