Blockades set up by lobster trappers in Canada have disrupted Maine's lobster small business.
Blockades set up by lobster trappers in Canada have disrupted Maine's lobster business.
You may possibly imagine a war in between lobster trappers to be one thing like this battle of the lobsters. OK, not truly. Nevertheless, the cost war heating up amongst the fishing folk in Maine and Canada this summer time is bringing everybody down.
It's currently been a pretty tough year for Maine's lobster business, with a glut of soft-shell lobsters causing rates to plummet and major lobstermen to voluntarily tie up their boats to reduce supply.
Then, just as rates in Maine started to stabilize a bit, bad news came in from Canada: A blockade.
The lobster industry in the province of New Brunswick operates out of a handful of towns along the Acadian coast. As significantly as 70 percent of Maine's lobster catch gets shipped up there to be shucked and frozen.
But when low cost lobster comes in from Maine, the Canadian fishermen there say they can't make a living.
"Our costs are really high," says Blaine Daigel, who hauls traps in the Northumberland Strait in Canada. " You've got your fuel. It really is $700 to $800 a day. We've got bait. We're paying a dollar a pound. So, it signifies your meat I do not know where we're going to survive out of the lobster. [The lobster processing plants are] only paying us $ 2.50."
So Daigel and other Canadian lobstermen lately staged angry demonstrations at the gates of the plants, which prevented trucks from acquiring in and forced the processors to temporarily stop accepting shipments from Maine.
"We sell about 80 percent of our product to the Canadian processors," says Chris Byers, who runs lobster wholesaler D.C. Air and Seafood Inc., in Winter Harbor, Maine. " Without having getting in a position to do that, they are holding trucks they are not letting us function."
Byers normally sends out five semi trucks day-to-day, loaded with lobster. But this week, he sent just two a day and he says fishing boats are tied up, idle in the harbor.
Some of individuals boats belong to the 40-year-old Winter Harbor Lobster cooperative, and some of their trappers say the logjam may possibly not be so terrible.
"It may well not be a negative issue to not fish," says coop member Billy Bob Faulkingham. " Particularly with the Canadians opening up, they are going to demand additional funds. And if they demand more dollars, we're going to get a lot more cash too."
Faulkingham's bottom line is off by around 50 percent this year, and he says he'd be thrilled to get the $ 2.50 a pound for his catch that Daigel scoffs at. Appropriate now, Faulkingham is receiving about half that.
But late Thursday, Maine lobstermen won a smaller victory. A court in New Brunswick issued a 10 -day injunction, prohibiting protesters from blocking gates leading into Canadian processing plants.
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