“The lobsters are there,” declared a veteran downeast co-op manager. Divers had reported the obstinate creatures were just milling around on the ocean floor, as if they were confused. “The fishermen are the same way,” he said. “Everybody’s almost in slow motion. They’re just kind of dragging along. They hate to be doing anything. They only do it out of necessity. Nobody’s real excited.
“The lobsters are there,” he repeated. “They just won’t do their thing ’til they’re darned good and ready.”
“It’s just water temperature, that’s all it is,” declared Peter McAleney, owner of Portland’s New Meadows Lobster, on August 7. “At my pump, here, it’s 49 degrees. That’s cold.” The temperature at his pump equals the temperature as the bottom of the ocean, and 49 degrees Fahrenheit is not warm enough for shedders to move. They need a water temperature of about 58 degrees. (Hard shell lobsters move at 42 degrees.) McAleney said Portland water temperatures were the same as those downeast. “It seems like the whole coast of Maine has very cold water right now,” he said. Fishermen and dealers agreed, water temperature has indeed been one of the culprits. Another is fog. One downeast dealer said his fishermen had only had three or four decent days since July 4th and added, “It’s very discouraging.”
The timing of this year’s shedders is off compared to the last few years, ditto the catch. One day a fisherman catches half the amount he caught the day before, and this has been the case from one end of the coast to the other. But speaking privately, a downeast dealer noted of his area, “If you go back six years or more, the fishermen never bothered to set their gear until after the Winter Harbor Lobster Festival, the second Saturday of August.” He advised, “You’ve got to wait till December to see what happened.” As of Aug. 7, one third of the catch brought to him was old shell that hadn’t even turned dark, as lobsters do preparatory to molting, and lobstermen fishing farther out reported old-shell females still carrying eggs. Veteran fisherman and buyers agreed, it has been an old-fashioned year.
McAleney said, “It’s like it used to be in the eighties and late seventies, so why everybody’s all upset is beyond me. Things are back to normal, the way they used to be. Of course, years ago, the catch wasn’t as large, or it was as large, but nobody was reporting it. The problem is, summertime’s almost over.” He noted that very few people do summer pounding anymore and those that pound in fall don’t put away as much as they used to. He thinks that could affect the market this year.
A Canadian dealer brought up pounding concerns that affect both Canadian and American lobstermen and dealers. “You’ve got to feed soft shell lobsters,” he said, recalling that two years ago in Western Nova Scotia, when fishermen had heavy landings of soft shells. The late molt presented quality and shipping problems Maine doesn’t have: Nova Scotia doesn’t have tourists in December. In order to let the shells harden enough to be shippable, fishermen and dealers put these shedders in crates, but didn’t feed them. When they pulled them out four weeks later, the lobsters were no good. “If that’s what is happening now in Maine,” he said, it could present problems if the lobsters’ blood protein is low, indicating that the lobsters are too weak to be shipped.
Both Canadians and Mainers have two options: the paper-thin-shelled lobsters can either be put in a tidal pound and fed or sold to processors. This coming season, starting in December, buyers and fishermen in Western Nova Scotia plan to do lots of sampling of blood serum levels to check the condition of lobsters that have been put away to keep product quality high. Mainers have the large market for “fresh-caught” lobsters: tourists. Although the tourist trade will drop sharply after Labor Day, the tourist season in Maine doesn’t really end until the last leaf falls, and since many in the lobster industry think the catch will not really come on until September.
Many fishermen and dealers questioned said they’d seen the lobster catch drop by half from one year to the next; it’s part of the natural cycle of things. A downeast buyer said, “Everything’s being done at a Mother Nature’s whim, and we’re going to have to wait it out.” He added, “I certainly don’t feel that at some point there won’t be cause for alarm, but I just think this is way too early.
“The bottom line: if they don’t trap this year, what are you going to do about it?”
He paused a moment, then said if they don’t, although it wouldn’t be good for anybody else, it might be good for young lobstermen because they’d learn a hard but necessary lesson. “A lot of people have become dependent and have set up their business predicated on large catches,” he said. “Large catches are very nice, but an exception.”
Though water temperatures rose in some places the week of Aug. 4, Stonington lobsterman Perley Fraser, who placed third in Race 18 at Stonington in his new Deutz-powered RP 35, said that though catches were very uneven, one day getting half what he had the day before, he was getting a little better than one pound per pot on a three-night set. He said he and others were sticking to that set-over because bait was so expensive, explaining, “It costs $140 to $160 to bait up.” Shedders made up about 90 percent of his catch.
By the time the shedders do hit in big numbers, Fraser said, not only will the smaller boats, outboards and 25- to 30-footers, be unable to steam out far enough to find them, fishermen and dealers alike worry that most tourists will have left. The processors will take the unshippable quality, but at a lower price. It’s been a hard season.
At Tenants Harbor, the catch was late and off by about 25 percent from last year at this time, according Bert Witham’s wife, Donni, who keeps the books. “Four of our fishermen owed us money after expenses, rather than getting a check,” she said of the previous week’s receipts. Witham, whose brand new 42-foot Duffy, built by Mike Hooper of Clark Island’s Mainely Boats, won or placed in race after race at Stonington, explained that fishermen could owe the buyer if they’d bought bait and fuel for five days, but only brought in 30 lbs. of lobster. He added he’d had a lobsterman tell him the week before that he’d gone fishing all spring and had just about broken even.
“I know a lot of people are nervous,” said the co-op manager. “I know a lot of dealers are scrambling for product because they can’t fill markets they’ve been accustomed to filling.”
The downeast dealer, advising patience, summed up the prevailing concern, saying, “Way too many people are getting way too nervous way too early.” And he was right. By Aug. 14, those knots in lobstermen’s and lobster buyers’ stomachs had relaxed a bit: the catch had picked up. At last.