Late August brought news of a lobster “tie-up” spreading west from harbors in eastern Maine.
The fishermen’s complaint, simply put, is a boat price so low (around $3 per lb.) that they can’t justify using the fuel and bait they need to haul their traps. The prices being charged for wholesale and retail lobster on the mainland, meanwhile, remain high — a function of supply and demand in a market where consumers seem willing to pay almost anything for a lobster dinner. It’s not a new story — there have been occasional tie-ups for decades — and fishermen, co-ops and dealers can “pound” their lobsters while they await a better price. But not so fast: the price of fuel has a way of distorting markets, sometimes changing them permanently. It’s not a pretty way to think about something we like to eat, but petroleum — in this case distilled into diesel fuel — is just as important an ingredient in a lobster dinner as the tail and claws of the critter itself. For communities that depend on lobsters to survive economically, the forces that prompted the August tie-up have ominous implications.