Catch Down, Cost Up for a Summer Favorite
Jul. 4–KITTERY, Maine — Bradley Cunningham’s summer has yet to begin.
The waterfront restaurant he manages, Bradley’s Lobster House, is famous for serving up the sea creatures, but a tough winter and cool spring have left his suppliers without their normal catch, forcing up his costs.
“It’s probably a lot worse than I’ve seen it in a number of years,” he said. “We can’t not have lobster, so we have to just pay whatever the cost is.”
The price of lobster is up sharply across New England this summer, the result of chilly waters that have kept local lobster catches paltry. Blame Canada, too. Canadian lobster suppliers are responding to increased demand for their product by raising prices.
New England lobster wholesalers and seafood restaurants say they’re paying as much as $2 per pound more for lobsters this summer compared with 2004, largely because they’ve been forced to buy more expensive lobsters from Canada, where fishermen are having a better season and where exporters have been stocking up for months on the tasty crustasceans.
“There’s a trickle right now” of lobsters caught in New England waters, said Bill Adler, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. “The price is up because the Canadians are charging a high price for them.”
Boston wholesalers paid as much as $6.25 per pound for lobsters caught by local fishermen last week, 25 percent more than at the same time last year.
Wholesale lobster imported from Canada cost about 12 percent more per pound than locally caught lobster last week, Adler said.
Last year at this time, too, Canadian lobster was more expensive than local lobster. But then, New England wholesalers could count on a plentitude of local lobster by the end of spring, allowing them to bypass the more expensive Canadian product. The weather has kept that from happening this year.
Lobsters’ growth and survival depend on water temperature, said Michael Tlusty, senior scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston. They can thrive in water that is between 41 and 72 degrees, but typically gravitate toward cooler waters.
But when the water gets too cold, lobsters won’t eat or even move.
“A lobster trap works because you put food in it. If it’s cold, they’re not going into a trap,” Tlusty said. With the cold winter and gloomy spring that just passed, New England coastal waters are still a bit cool for lobstermen to see much success, he said.
Canadian lobstermen largely avoid the same pitfall by “pounding” their lobsters in the fall — catching them in peak season and storing them by the hundreds by blocking off a large section of a bay. That’s impossible in Massachusetts, where most waterfront property is taken up by recreation or luxury housing, Tlusty said.
The cool weather has hurt business for Ben Alfiero, owner of the Harbor Fish Market in Portland, Maine, a seafood wholesaler. Not only have slim lobster pickings hit him, but the recent red tide outbreak made other shellfish harder to get as well. (Lobsters are not affected by red tide, although Massachusetts officials advise against eating the tomalley, or liver.)
“It’s all Mother Nature hurting us,” he said, pointing to a huge, empty tank, which he said would normally be filled with lobsters this time of year.
At wholesaler Lobster Express in Hull, owner Ron Patuto said he is paying about 50 cents per pound more for his lobsters than he did last year. He did not disclose the actual price he paid, though he said much of what he’s buying and selling this year is shipped from Canada.
Patuto, though, says the weak dollar has also boosted prices in New England.
“It used to be Canada catches their lobsters and dropped them off in Boston, and then they got sent over to France,” he said. “With the dollar being weaker overseas, the bigger companies in Canada cut us out down here and ship directly to Europe,” where they get even better prices.
Back at Warren’s Lobster House in Kittery, the higher prices are being passed on to consumers. A 1-pound lobster dinner goes for $20.99 this year, with a 1 1/2-pound lobster selling for $30.99, according to the restaurant’s menu.
The same 1-pound dinner was about $16.99 last summer, Cunningham said.
Some customers didn’t mind.
“The main thing on our mind was lobster, and it didn’t matter what it cost,” said Durham Smith, who, with his wife, Cindy, drove from Lake Wylie, S.C., to visit their newborn grandson. “You don’t care too much about the price when you drive 1,000 miles.”
People who didn’t drive as far weren’t deterred, either. Tina Manougian and Gloria Singletary, both of Kittery, were at Warren’s for the second time in as many weeks on Thursday. Manougian had the same meal both times: lobster and steamers.
The price, she said, “wouldn’t have mattered. I’m on vacation.”
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