BS: Lobster wars

Subject: BS: Lobster wars
From: kendall
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 07:40 AM

Can you believe that the price of Lobsters is so low that we were shipping them to Canadian processing plants? Our fishermen are on the edge of going under and Canada was importing our cheap Lobsters because their season is not yet open.
Yesterday, a gang of NB Lobstermen stopped an American truck and kept it there with the fridge doors open for 6 hours! The driver was threatened with bodily harm if he ever comes back. The Police stood there and did NOTHING!

Our fishermen didn't raise hell last spring when we were importing cheap Canadian Lobsters!
We don't raise hell when we see fleets of trucks hauling Canadian lumber into Maine!
As you know, some of my favorite people are Canadians, but none of those vandals qualify.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: SINSULL
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 08:19 AM

Latest news reports are that five lobster processing plants have been shut down by Canadian lobstermen trying to stop US imports. This could get very ugly.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: kendall
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 09:30 AM

Maybe we should place a gang of hoodlums at the border and stop and burn Canadian lumber. Those clowns destroyed a pile of money by keeping those doors open.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: maeve
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 09:36 AM

It's already ugly.

Maybe we need to work at establishing fair trade, effective communication, and mutual support between the hard working folks in both countries. People act in desperate and self-defeating ways when they are feeling threatened.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Charley Noble
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 06:09 PM

Meanwhile the price that diners are charged for their lobster diners hasn't gone down. Buy directly from the lobstermen/women.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 06:15 PM

We need to have something like EBay for food where people could buy it directly...lMaine Oysters...treat for many people. And most of us do not follow the prices of various things but would purchase in home quantity.   mg

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 07:47 PM

Kendall,
I'm not in any way trying to make excuses but the real problem is the low price that you mention. New Brunswick fishermen are protesting the Maine lobster because it is being sold to the processing plants for $2.oo a pound. They say that they can not equip and maintain a boat to compete for that price. Someone is making a killing on this but it is neither Maine or New Brunswick fishermen. The retail price for live lobster here is about $9.00 a pound so the question is what happens to the other $7.00? Frustration indeed, but fishermen are being cheated on the price on both sides of the border! I suspect that it was the greedy buyers or processing companies and not the fishermen who suffered the lost truckload. Now if they had just given that truckload to us I'm sure that between the two of us we could have disposed of it in a much friendlier fashion! I'll even bring the beer and I'm sure thgt gnu would be willing to help!

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 09:05 PM

I think a lot is the price of fuel. Hope I see the day where boats can produce their own solar and wind energy, backed up of course with gas...actually that day is here but probably not down the level of fishermen yet. Here there are terrible fears because some really big stuff is floating int he ocean from Japan..mg

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Beer
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 09:21 PM

Eating Lobster is just a memory for me. Can't afford them any more.
And Dad was a lobster fisherman. he told me stories when he was a child going down to the shore (P.E.I.) with his Dad after a storm and picking them up on the beach and using them for fertilizer. When i was a youngster Dad and I would wait for the Caspin(I will try and find out the real name as this is an Acadian one.)to run and we would use them for fertilizer.
Adrien
p.s. Sandy, can I come to the party? I'll bring the malt beer.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 09:37 PM

You're on Adrien!

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: gnu
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 09:46 PM

Kendall... no report here of the truck with the doors open for six hours. As far as the RCMP not doing anything in such a situation... oh, here's my take in a nutshell... I doubt it.

Trucks held up... yes.

Plants shut down... OF COURSE! The guys who own the plants are making BIG coin and they know the fishermen know and they know if they push the fishermen toooo far the plants may GET shut down... around 3AM.

We are getting LOTS of in depth media coverage here. I am a twenty minute drive from one of the large plants and less than two hours from a number of others. It's complicated on both sides of the border. Our media has been covering the story in Maine with all of the stakeholders there as well.

I just can't believe the story of a truck's doors being held open for 6 hours to willfully destroy a load... in full view of the RCMP. Sorry, but I would have to see it. CBC has camera crews at every protest. ATV and CTV are there too, I believe. Newspapers are on it as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: maeve
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 09:58 PM

The truck incident is described by its driver here: http://www.pressherald.com/news/low-lobster-prices-spark-border-clash-in-canada_2012-08-04.html

An excerpt: "When a protest broke out Thursday in Shediac, New Brunswick, Leonard Garnett of Steuben, Maine, drove into an international incident -- hauling 37,000 pounds of live lobster.

Garnett pulled into the loading dock of the Shediac Bay Processing Co. and climbed into the sleeper portion of his cab while waiting for plant workers to begin unloading his lobster.

"I heard some hollering going on and there was a crowd of people standing the roadway," said Garnett, who owns L.H. Garnett Trucking and spoke Friday as he drove back to Maine. "They was hollering, 'Shut the truck off!' and 'Shut the plant down!' They was hollering all kinds of stuff."

Garnett said a plant worker warned him that the protesters might try to shut off the refrigeration unit on his trailer to spoil the lobster, then five or six protesters approached his truck.

"They were talking in French, so I didn't understand a word they were saying, but they were pointing at my reefer (refrigeration unit), so I got the gist," he said.

The group walked away without tampering with the refrigeration unit, Garnett said, then the plant owner asked him to leave to try to stop the protest.

Garnett tried to drive off, he said, but couldn't make the turn out of the plant's parking lot because the protesters' pickup trucks were blocking part of the road. When he tried to back up to get a better angle on the turn, he said, the protesters gathered behind his truck, essentially locking him in place.

Garnett said some protesters started to put stickers on this truck, protesting the importation of Maine lobsters.

"We had a heated discussion over that," he said.

Garnett got even more upset when some protesters threatened to spray-paint his trailer and others opened its rear doors, exposing the lobsters to warm air before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police closed them.

Then the protesters tampered with one of his front tires, causing the police to call in a repair truck to fix the valve and fill the tire with air, which cost Garnett $151.

Finally, the protesters told Garnett that if he left the trailer and tons of lobsters, they would let him go. "I wasn't leaving it there," he said, pointing out that his insurance rates would rise.

Garnett said he was never really afraid that protesters might try to hurt him, although he was adamant about protecting his trailer.

"I come from Down East Maine and I don't think I know enough to be scared," he said.

About a dozen of the protesters were causing most of the problems, Garnett said, and "as an overall group, they were very good people," including one protester who kept climbing next to his window, assuring him that things would be worked out.

Garnett said he sympathizes with the protesters, having seen the problems that low prices have caused for lobstermen in Maine.

"It's a no-win situation for either side," he said,

Police finally forced the protesters to give Garnett room to back up and leave. He said he took the lobsters to "an undisclosed location in Nova Scotia," where the load's owner -- who Garnett also declined to identify -- had found another buyer.

Garnett said he is looking forward to a couple of days off before his next job, which should be less eventful: hauling a load of frozen blueberries, inside Maine's borders."

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Beer
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 09:59 PM

Sandy,
Made a bad mistake. Caspin is one of the ugliest fish to be caught. we use to go out and gig Flounder and often catch Caspin (real name Scalpin).
What dad and i would go and get for fertilizer was Gaspereau. The correct name is Alewife. Part of the herring family. I would sit in the brook and see them swarming, them up they would charge. We would fill up the old van with potato bags full of them.
Ad.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: gnu
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 06:49 AM

Maeve's post... ""They were talking in French, so I didn't understand a word..."" I assume they were speaking to each other but under the circumstances, they should have spoken to the trucker, in English.

I am appalled that they messed with him when he tried to leave. That is just stupid, especially after they accomplished their goal... IDIOTS! And fooling with his truck? Downright unacceptable.

At one of the earliest protests, the fishermen bought a case of Maine lobster and explained "to the camera" why it was of poor quality compared to the lobster about to be in season here. That is one of their biggest beefs. They are about to get screwed on the price (keep reading, even though that sounds "wrong") even MORESO given the fact that their catch will be of much better quality. Think about that for a minute and I am sure you will see what they see... the plant owners are using the low Maine price to justify similar prices for better lobsters. That would piss off anybody. Especially when you add in all the government money (fishermen do the "dirty work" and pay the taxes) given to the plants... MILLIONS. When a plant owner has his own airstrip and a jet???

As for the competitive market arguements, most people don't realize that there are no quotas in Maine. Fish til she's full is the order of the day. There is no set season in Maine. This year, when the lobsters started shelling three weeks early due to the warm winter and spring, the fishermen got on the water three weeks early. The supply is the biggest in over 50 years and is amazing to even the long time Maine fishermen. So, they can land huge volumes when they want and sell em real cheap here. That means staying afloat during a glut and economic hard times. Nobody can blame them for that. HOWEVER, our fishermen can't do that. They get to land what their licence says they can land when their licence says they can and then they are on land.

Okay, I'll stop there. There is a LOT more to the situation. I'll just make a comment that addresses ONE "issue". Fishing is hard and dangerous work. Owning a processing plant, a house worth millions, fancy cars, a fancy boat moored at a dock in front of your house so you can get to your airstrip and jump on your jet on a whim? That don't seem real hard or dangerous... unless you fuck over your neighbours that make all that possible. As for holding up trucks from Maine, them good ol' boys are "drawing attention" in the most innocuous way they can at this point. That's unfortunate for the Maine fishermen but that's what they are forced to do... by their neighbours.

Today would be a big day here. Big parties and ceremonies like the blessings of the fleets at each harbour and wharf as they go to set the first pots for tomorrow's first haul. Not today as the season has been delayed while the fishermen, the plant owners and the government try to sort things out. Maine and NB goverments are talking and the Governor has said he will talk directly with the Premier if he wants. They have four days before the real war starts. If it does, I hope every Maine trucker knows what not to do. Some of them good ol' boys ain't so good.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: kendall
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 07:22 AM

The real problem is global warming.Too many Lobsters. It's simple supply and demand.
I thought we already had fair trade? Isn't that why we tolerate Canadian lumber coming in and lowering the price of our own lumber?
And last spring when we imported cheap Canadian Lobsters? Our fishermen didn't commit vandalism.

Trade has to be a two way street and the NB lobster catchers can't have it both ways.

Talk about cheap Lobsters, when I was a Coastal Warden I paid 65 cents a pound. (Wholesale).

With the price of fuel, bait and gear going up all the time, all fishermen are feeling the pinch. Blaming it on each other is silly.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: EBarnacle
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 07:48 AM

There can't be too many lobster. When we first came to this side of the pond, lobster were so common they were used for pig feed. They were considered barely fit for humans to eat unless you were too poor to eat anything else. Later generations discovered that they were the kings of shellfish.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Becca72
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 09:46 AM

Just a side note, lobster here in Maine is retailing for $3.99/lbs

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: SINSULL
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 11:26 AM

Not sure about poorer quality unless they are referring to soft shell vs hard shell. I am sure that the lobstermen are losing out on both sides of the border while the bulk buyers charge what they choose from restaurants and the like. $20 for two pound and a half lobsters advertised locally at restaurants. Does it cost $16 to boil them? Buy direct, guys. Better price and help a lobstermnan.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 12:46 PM

So far Maine lobstermen have managed their fisheries well by limiting the number of licenses available, and the number of traps any individual can set out. There's also an upper limit to the size of a lobster that can be caught and sold so they may continue to thrive as breeders; there are no such limit in Canada or states to the south of Maine that I am aware of. Still Maine lobstermen might not be harvesting record landings if lobster predators (fish) were not in such short supply.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 09:06 AM

A Canadian judge has ordered the protesters to limit their numbers to six and stand 200' away from the protested property.
Won't protect the truckers going to and from the plants.
Wish I could eat the stuff. I'd buy from a local.
SINS

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: gnu
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 09:27 PM

Becca... $9.99 a pound here. Somebody is getting screwed.

Charley... Maine's conservation efforts go much further than that from what I have heard. Well done say I! But, the glut of lobsters now is from the warm winter and spring... everything was early this year all along the Atlantic Coast. EXCEPT our lobster season because IT goes by the calendar and not by the lobster.

As far as limiting the number of pots, there is still nolimit as to the number of lobsters per pot per day, right? or wrong?

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Ed T
Date: 10 Aug 12 - 10:06 PM

""As for the competitive market arguements, most people don't realize that there are no quotas in Maine.""

""So far Maine lobstermen have managed their fisheries well by limiting the number of licenses available, and the number of traps any individual can set out. There's also an upper limit to the size of a lobster that can be caught and sold so they may continue to thrive as breeders; there are no such limit in Canada or states to the south of Maine that I am aware of.""

A few points:

There are no lobster quotas in Canada's inshore lobster fishery. The only quotas are in the very, very small offshore fishery off southwestern Nova Scotia.

There is a specific (mostly two month) season in each most east coast Canadian fishing areas, limits on the number of lobster licences, the number of traps fished per license. There is also a limit on bost size and on the lobster size fishermen are allowed to land. (The small number of aboriginal fishermen fish under different rules than non native commercial fishermen). There is no trawling for lobsters in Canada, (that results in poorer quality landed product).

Lobsters reproduce at a smaller size in the warmer coastal waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which allows a smaller "canner lobster" to be retained. In the colder Atlantic waters, where they mature at a larger size, the retention size (market size lobster) is larger.

Because coastal waters have been warmer in recent years, the lobster moult is often poorly matched to the seasons. This has resulted in lower quality "soft shelled" lobsters being landed (I suspect more so the farther south one fishes, such as in Maine). These lobsters are not suitable for the traditional "higher priced" markets, and do not ship or hold well. They are most often canned (to keep the market quality high). Prices for soft shelled lobsters are low, and pushes the price for every fisherman down (because of quality issues). - The soft shelled quality problems are worse in some US areas, but have been seen in most lobstering areas- Lobster canneries are mostly in New Brunswick and PEI (where "canner lobsters" are mostly landed. Few, if any, canneries are in the USA. This is why they end up where they do.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 11 Aug 12 - 12:47 AM

For five bucks EACH we could purchase 2 pound live lobster in Rockport ME from the dock.

Today, Maine is in a world market...South African and Oz cultivators offer a similar product.


The allure of lobster over "monk fish˝ is quickly lost with "wholesale " prices like these for similar 1970 era two pound crustacian.




Sincerly,
Gargoyle

the craving subsides when you realize they are little more than an ocean crawling, carrion eating, cockroach.


40 dollars a pound.... www.eastcoastgourmet.com/Live-Maine-Lobster-Delivery/

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Aug 12 - 01:00 AM

Wal-Mart has Chinese lobster for 4.99..................


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 12 - 06:05 AM

DEAL! $3 for canners and $3.50 for markets. Pots go in tomorrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 12 - 06:43 AM

I'd like to get out to Cassie Cape... er, ah Cap des Cassie... on accounta the blessing will be a big one this year. Haven't been out there for this occasion for over 30 years. It's quite a site to see the boats heading out in parade fashion.

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: Ed T
Date: 11 Aug 12 - 10:36 AM

""On the 11th day of August, my true love gave to me, cheap Chinese lobsta""

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 12 - 01:53 PM

Well, just when ya think ya seen it all... Sobeys is selling "fresh" periwinkles for $2.49 a pound here in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. What's next? dandelion greens? >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Lobster wars
From: maeve
Date: 11 Aug 12 - 02:51 PM

"Lobstermen and processors in New Brunswick struck a deal late Friday that both sides hope averts a crisis that resulted in heated protests a week ago..." http://www.pressherald.com/news/Canadian-lobstermen-strike-deal-with-processors.html