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4 MAINE LOBSTERMEN’S ASSOCIATION April 2012

by Catherine Schmitt

When Tim Harkins thinks about the lobster industry, he thinks about eggs. Thanks to the invention of the egg carton (in 1911), the fragile and perish-

able egg can be transported long distances in relative safety. Yet once an egg breaks, it’s worthless.

Like eggs, lobsters can be moved around the globe, but as soon as a lobster is damaged, the value drops dramatically. The sheer volume of Maine lobsters harvest-ed in recent years has many dealers and processors too preoccupied with quantity to worry about such damage. Yet as more and more lobsters are delivered to the dock, quality suffers. And poor quality threatens the entire industry.

“I don’t think we do enough down the chain to protect the quality of our prod-uct,” Tim Harkins, president of Rocky Coast Lobster Co., told participants in a recent Trade Adjustment Assistance program workshop in Portland. “There are things we can do to make sure a lobster is alive, healthy, and gets to where it’s going.”

Harkins has been in the seafood business for nearly 25 years. He ran a lobster processing plant, has experience with urchin, eel, and tuna, and at one time was a buyer at the Portland Fish Exchange. Today, his company handles live lobsters, and Harkins knows fi rst-hand how quality can affect business.

The current business model is structured to achieve profi ts based on volume. While the Maine fi shery is open year-round, the majority of landings occur in less than fi ve months. Maine’s peak landings correspond to a soft shell product which is harvested for a minimum price. This has many lobstermen rethinking how they fi sh and changes they could make to get a better price. As Harkins explained, small changes in how lobster is handled on the boat and at the dock can reduce shrinkage and lead to stronger boat prices.

Ron Doane of RDR Lobster in Trenton agreed. “Right now, the problem is not the market. When we get quality lobsters, we can fi ll markets, and those mar-kets are there. It’s just that we need more shippable lobsters to meet that demand.”The independent lobsterman, who feels that he is always at the mercy of the dealer and the processor and the market forces of the world, may wonder why he should care about quality, especially when lobsters are fl ooding the coast of Maine. The rea-son is that buyers pay lobstermen based on what they are going to lose. Every dead

lobster increases their cost by a nickel, and nickels can add up quickly.Harkins urged the lobstermen at the workshop to fi nd out who is buying their

lobster. “Ask them what they are looking for—if you give it to them, maybe you can get a better price,” he said.

Lobsters are wild animals; their quality can’t be improved, but signifi cant losses can be avoided. “Good handling can mean the difference between a soft-shelled lobster arriving at the dock weak versus dead,” said Dana Morse of Maine Sea Grant and University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “and good handling can pay off even more with higher-value, shippable hard-shells.”

A lobsterman can control how he handles lobster on the boat. He can control how lobsters are treated as they travel from the boat to the dock, and likely be re-

Maintaining lobster quality in an era of quantity

Quality is an issue whether the lobster goes to a processor or to the live market. Photo by Catherine Schmitt.

Continued on page 9

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and are currently being used by the National Marine Fisheries Service in computer models that will determine areas of overlap between whales and concentrations of fi shing gear. The models will be used to craft regulations that minimize entangle-ments in the locations that pose the most risk.

DMR has engaged in projects throughout 2011 in collaboration with the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation and several lobstermen to document the density of buoys both by boat and plane to validate the information supplied by fi shermen through these voluntary surveys. Additionally, lobstermen have been instrumental in several gear research and development projects that have taken place over the years, including testing experimental low-profi le groundlines, attaching data loggers to their groundlines and fi shing larger trawls than normally deployed so that their experiences, safety concerns and operational effi ciencies could be documented.

All the time and energy that collaborating fi shermen have put into these research projects has resulted in the development of the baseline data necessary for Maine to advocate for operationally viable alternatives in the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team process.

Erin Summers is a protected resources specialist at the Department of Marine Resources offi ce in Boothbay Harbor.

Collaborative research continued from page 3

Becky Woodward of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute putting a suction cup tag on a humpback whale. Lisa Conger photo, courtesy of DMR.

Product handling continued from page 4

April 2012 MAINE LOBSTERMEN’S ASSOCIATION 9

warded for delivering a healthy animal that has a hard shell, yields lots of meat, and survives storage and transport.

Remember, lobsters are like eggs. Every time a lobster is handled, it experiences stress. Clearly, not every Maine lobster is going to have the strength to survive a trip to China, Italy, or California. But quality is important even for lobsters destined for the processing line. Processors are getting more concerned about quality, since they realize most profi t now comes not from picked meat but from shell-on product.“A discussion with harvesters about quality is something that would really have trac-tion in our company,” said Jon Cowles of East Coast Seafood, Inc. in Lynn, Mass. “Improved quality would increase revenue for us, and for the harvesters.”

At this point, catching more lobsters isn’t going to fetch a better price. Only by distinguishing their lobsters with good shell quality, high meat yield, shippability, and great taste can harvesters increase revenue.

Catherine Schmitt is communications coordinator for Maine Sea Grant at the University of Maine.

More lobster is good, but better quality lobster is best. MLA photo.