Lobster business fishes for a lifeline
MARSHFIELD, Mass. -- Gregg Dexter hauls a 50-pound wire lobster trap out of the frigid, muddy waters of Cape Cod Bay, one of 800 traps he has to fetch as he stores his gear for the winter.
He's ending his season three weeks early because the catch is declining, bringing a dismal season to a close. Because of a gloomy economy, the price of lobsters sank from October through Christmas, the peak fishing period.
In the 15 years Dexter, 40, has been in the business, things have never been worse. The "boat price" that lobstermen get fell to $2.25 a pound this season, the lowest they've been in 20 years — at the same time that the costs of fuel, bait and insurance are going up.
'A celebration food'
Now, lobster prices are back up to as much as $5.40, but too late for Dexter and the more than 6,700 lobstermen along the New England coast.
They are pulling their traps out of the water. Canadian lobstermen are still fishing, but their catch has been down because recent bad weather has kept them tied to the dock.
That means the supply is tighter, pushing prices up.
"There's a little more shortage in January than we're used to seeing," says distributor Neil Zarella, president of Boston Lobster Co.
Dexter, measuring and tagging lobsters in his boat, Happy Days, says, "It doesn't do a thing for me. The season is over."
It's been a volatile season that saw the lobster industry become another casualty of the global recession.
As consumers tightened their spending, demand for lobsters dropped. The credit squeeze hurt processing companies in Canada, which supply lobsters to restaurants, hotels and supermarkets worldwide. That led to a glut of the 10-legged crustaceans and a drop in prices.
"It all comes down to economics," says Bob Bayer of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine. "People are not eating out. Lobster is a celebration food, and people are not celebrating as much."
"It's been a laser point of attention showing how the world economy can impact local people," says George Lapointe, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
