The website lobstertales.org has a brand new look. Lobster Tales allows communities to track their lobsters through the marketplace to an individual consumer, and also provides each consumer with a detailed description of the fisherman and the specific area where his or her lobster was caught.
The project is based on a relatively simple concept – that consumers are interested in where their food comes from, and that harvesters, like lobstermen, would like to know where their product ends up. By printing claw bands with a web address and a special code representing who caught it, Lobster Tales allows this connection to take place. The website, which includes information about lobstermen and communities, and maps showing where lobsters end up, allows harvesters and consumers to learn about each other.
The new home page design offers two points of entry, represented by the questions ‘Who Caught ME?’ and ‘Who Bought ME?’ These two questions are intended to convey the project’s split nature. Just as Lobster Tales is intended to speak equally to audiences at opposite ends of the lobster distribution chain, it has been shaped by two very different motivators – place-based education and marketing. Strange bedfellows perhaps, but this unique coupling is a large part of what makes Lobster Tales compelling enough to have captured the attention of not only Maine lobstering communities, but also the New York Times, CNN and Downeast Magazine.
Aside from its obvious value to the Maine lobstering industry, Lobster Tales is a model for other products that are produced locally and distributed globally. “We’re working hard to gather the resources and to form the partnerships that will be necessary to fully realize this potential,” said Nate Michaud, who directs the Lobster Tales project for the Island Institute. The concept, he said, can “distinguish Maine lobster in the global market, and to do so in manner which helps create better-educated lobster consumers, and healthier, more sustainable lobstering communities.”