P.E.I. Says the World Wants Their Lobsters

PE: Fishermen discover world “clawing” for P.E.I. lobster
By Steve Sharratt, Transcontinental Media

Source: The Guardian, March 22, 2010

[CHARLOTTETOWN, PE] — P.E.I. lobster fishermen may be on the waves of creating their own marketing co-operative after enduring dismal prices last year and discovering a phenomenal demand for their catches this year at the Boston Seafood Show.

“The good news is that the bad news isn’t bad after all,” said Mike McGeoghegan, president of the P.E.I. Fishermen’s Association, who just returned from the biggest international seafood show. “Last year the show barely had attendance. This year the Expo Centre was packed and you could barely move and everyone wants our lobster.”

After watching catch prices drop by 50 per cent in the last three years, fishermen contend there must be incidents of price manipulation on the Maritime scene after being advised that seafood demand in the United States — including lobster — was up by 100 per cent last fall.

The two biggest seafood restaurant chains, Red Lobster and Olive Garden, didn’t lower lobster prices on their menus, although they watched orders drop by 20 per cent, suggesting it was too difficult to increase again.

Lobster fishermen faced a terrible season last year barely getting $3 a pound after earning almost twice that amount three years ago.

The seafood show this year drew 16,000 companies from over 90 countries and every seafood online media outlet and brokerage house is confirming a major demand for lobster because there is nothing in storage.

“We’ve been fed a lot of bunk,” says Pinette-area fisherman Charlie McGeoghegan, who attended the show with his father. “Everybody is crying for lobster around the world and yet we’re being told on the local scene that demand is down and the exchange rate is killing us.”

The Belfast/Murray River MLA said claims the recession has dwindled demand are false and every seafood seller he spoke to at the two-day show is “begging” to get lobster to market. Last summer, many Island fishermen were bypassing local processors and having no problem selling their catch from the back of their trucks for $5 a pound.

“I don’t think fishermen should sell a pound this year if we don’t get a price that reflects the demand,” said the association chairman. “I’m not pointing fingers, but there can be no possible reason why lobster prices on Prince Edward Island remain low this year.”

True North Foods, which sells 2,000 tonnes of seafood a day to China, doesn’t market any lobster, said the MLA, because they don’t have any to sell.

“What we heard from these seafood sellers goes against the grain of what fishermen are being told on the Island,” he said. “There’s an open door to a new market in China and no one is knocking on it. It’s like there’s a cartel of processors in the Maritimes who are setting the price and leaving the fishermen out to dry and that is going to change.”

The PEIFA chair, in Moncton for fishery meetings, estimates Island fishermen lost $40 million last year and the P.E.I. economy missed out on over $100 million in spinoffs because of the price differences in lobster.

“We were fishing right beside Nova Scotia fishermen (in the Northumberland Strait) who were earning $1.75 more per pound for the same lobsters we were landing.”

P.E.I. landed over 22 million pounds of lobster in 2009. At the recent PEIFA annual meeting in Charlottetown, a major American business guru told fishermen the Island is not a “small speck” in the seafood industry — as the processing industry advises here — and provides 80 per cent of whole and cooked red lobster to the world marketplace.

A Beach Point fisherman who received $2.75 per pound this past season for his catch found himself paying $43 for a cooked lobster in a Charlottetown restaurant this winter when he took his wife out for dinner.

Fishermen were earning $5.50 for canners and $6.50 for markets in 2006 but netted only $2.75 for canners and $3.50 for markets last year. A provincial Department of Fisheries report indicates that even though volumes were down last year, export values in dollars were way up.