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Paying the Ultimate Price



While the lobster catch is settling back to the pre-2012 glut numbers, the price has decided to remain in the same ditch. Fishermen and most in the industry are asking why.

What happened to the supply and demand theories and charts that are dragged out for an economics lecture whenever lobster prices hit the fan?

Well there’s nothing new to say about not enough markets for the amount of product out there. There is some consolation in dollars per trip. But the warm water that drives the lobster gluts, the sustainability of these large lobster populations and just how high water temperatures will go remain grating questions.

Market development is becoming as important to lobster economics as sustainable fishing is to resource management.

The bill that enables the formation of the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaboration just passed. The Commissioner’s appointees will be named in October and a plan is in place for next year.

Fishermen’s license fees will be increased to bring the budget for the collaborative’s marketing plans from the current $350,000 to $2.2 million a year in 3 years. Math?

No one else benefits from the harvesting of lobster, the largest industry in the state, other than lobstermen? This amount of money to build a far-reaching plan with professional marketing and world-class advertising for a $300 million industry seems light by a few million dollars.

Alaska built a lasting market for wild salmon. It cost them a lot of money and 20 years. Senator Ted Stevens helped the salmon fishery establish the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. The ASMI got money from the state. Fishermen paid 5 cents a pound on the wild salmon catch. But they didn’t pay for the whole project. The state provided funding, but it in turn benefited from increased tax revenues and jobs. States regularly fund tourism, development and tax breaks to corporations.

Testing the collaborative’s expense waters with $750,000 next year, as planned, may be a way to ease the pain of paying for an as yet unknown result. But exploring what others have done and what it cost them could offer a preview to the ultimate cost reality. That reality could well be beyond what every lobsterman should be expected to pay. Ultimately more of the beneficiaries should be contributing.

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