The price of lobster has dropped, but the cost to catch and process them it has not.
Note: A version of this story was first published in Foodservice News in February 2013, thus explaining some of the less-than-timely stastistics. It was a damn interesting (and tasty) journey, and many of the same issues exist today.
A restaurant with lobster on the menu usually indicates there’s confidence in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter if the meat arrives pre-cooked frozen in a vacuum-sealed package, or still within a live-and-kicking crustacean, care is needed in preparation for two reasons: it’s a delicate flesh, and generally pricey.
It’s an incredibly versatile food, able to make distinct any meal from simple sandwich at a seaside shack (a great lobster roll is a singular pleasure) to the upper echelons of fine dining. In practiced hands, it’s a quick preparation, literally minutes from a live and hostile creature to plate.
But there is focused labor involved in that preparation, particularly with live lobster—attention must be paid. Spoilage happens rapidly; the animal must be alive the moment before cooking, or the meat flash frozen if it’s to be shipped raw.
Further, with a live lobster, the chef (or home cook) is killing a very active creature, right there. Then there’s the dismemberment, getting that sweet and tender meat (if it’s cooked properly) from the tough shell. Anyone who has eaten at a traditional lobster boil has a grasp (literally) of the labor involved.
The work involved in harvesting, processing and distributing lobster to the menu is the primary reason it remains an expensive protein (when compared to other proteins from land or sea) to place on the menu—even with the abundant harvest and price crash during 2012, to the point where lobster fishermen in Maine and Canada were getting less than $2 per pound for their catch (lobster fishers need about $4 just to cover the cost of running their boats). That price drop didn’t translate too much to the consumer or restaurateur, however.
The catch
In the ocean along the Northeast coast of North America dwells the American lobster, unique for its crusher and pincher claws. While Maine is the most famous name in lobster in the United States, if you’ve purchased lobster, it’s likely some came from Canada’s East Coast, the largest producer of lobster in the world—with 32 percent, all species considered (the next country that comes close is the U.S., which harvest 23 percent of the world’s supply). As a country it harvested 180 million pounds from the ocean in 2011, and exported 80 percent of its lobster (live and processed) to the United States. In total, Canada exported about 94 percent of its lobster products—$800 million worth—to the world. It’s an industry the nation looks to protect and promote.
Maine’s bountiful harvest last summer and fall pinched Canadian fisherman not only with low prices at the docks (Maine’s fisherman were also impacted), but also at the lobster processing plants. The U.S. has only five or six plants, Canada has dozens. Maine’s record harvest clogged Canadian plants so much that in some cases, Canadian fishermen were being told their catch wasn’t needed.
In response, those Canadian lobster harvesters blockaded canneries taking in Maine lobster. New Brunswick Fisheries Minister Michael Olscamp stepped in. Maine’s lobster industry got their then-senator, Olympia Snowe, to write a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to investigate.
It was against that backdrop that I travelled with a delegation of 20 chefs and journalists from 13 countries to New Brunswick last September (2012), guests of the government of Canada and its salmon and lobster industries. The country’s government is pushing hard to promote a “Canada brand,” across its industries, and in the case of lobster, broaden its exports to foreign markets to take up the growing bounty and keep prices at a level to preserve a living for its independent, small-boat fisherman.
On one day, our group was cruising on a lobster boat off the coast of New Brunswick in the Bay of Fundy, arguably the world’s prime lobster fishing ground. It was September; the harvest season hadn’t begun yet. That’s one of the issues Canadian fishermen have with their Maine counterparts, just a stone’s throw to the south. “In Maine, they fish all the time—they have no seasons,” said Brittany McDonald. She and her husband, Justin, run the small family operation. “Canada had a huge harvest (this year), but the canneries were full. If we’re processing lobsters, we’d like them to be Canadian lobsters.”
Watching the labor involved in harvesting lobster, one grasps the passions involved. It is hard work. The McDonalds fish in Lobster Fishing Area No. 35 (out of 40 strictly regulated LFAs dominated by small, independent harvesters surrounding the coasts of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Quebec) and the season from October 14 to December 31 is by far the most productive. “We get 80 percent of our weight for the year,” Brittany said, adding that the second season is April to July 31. “From October 14 to mid November, Justin is pretty much gone. They are out for three days, pop in after that to transfer lobsters from the live wells to the holders, shower, then head back out. He might only be back for two or three hours.”
The traps, about four feet in length, are baited and set several to a line—those lines being long and marked by a buoy unique to each fishing company. Being out of season, we didn’t see the real action (and no fishermen in their right mind would sacrifice a day of income during the season), but a demonstration. Still, it was instructive. Hooking the lines. Hauling the traps. Emptying them (the traps were planted with two live lobsters; there might be a bunch in each one during the season, active with claws unbound and quite angry). Stacking them, re-baiting, and setting them out again. The fisherman is also quality-control officer. Each lobster caught must be measured on the spot—too small and they must be returned to the ocean. Also, females carrying eggs must be returned to the sea. Some harvesters will etch a notch in its tail that will remain visible for years—females with this notch can’t be harvested or sold. It’s difficult and sometimes dangerous work, particularly in frigid weather.
Our group watched and listened on that unseasonably warm and sunny September day, imagining what it would be like during a windy, sleeting night in November. “It’s amazing the technology behind the salmon industry,” said James Norman, the executive chef at the Grand Hotel Kempinski, a five star luxury hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, noting the salmon industry’s hatcheries and farming techniques. “Yet with lobster, it’s still a guy in a boat.”
Processing plotline
That old-fashioned piece—the harvesting—might never change. Promising work is being made to insure supply by “seeding” lobster larvae in artificial ocean reefs, but “farmed” lobster isn’t likely. Even with successful seeding techniques, that “guy in a boat” on the high seas will always be needed.
There is an effort underway to modernize and streamline the rest of the complicated business of getting lobster to market, however. From the boat, the lobster—the purpose being to keep it alive for much of its journey—travels through a variety of handlers, from the shore dealers to the shippers, distributors, processors and ultimately, the retailer, wholesaler or restaurant. Tack on top of that the inventory managers with their massive holding facilities that are necessary to maintain a steady supply of lobster throughout the year, and it is a costly venture.
And there really isn’t a way to get around the labor of processing, either. There is little automated about it, short of the steam kettles that cook the lobster and packaging machinery. The space required is massive, not only for the disassembly lines, but the holding areas for live lobsters. “At Christmastime I have a million pounds of lobster floating outside my office,” said Stuart McKay, general manager of the Paturel International processing plant on Deer Island, New Brunswick.
McKay and his staff led our group through the highly active plant, where 30,000 to 40,000 pounds of lobster are processed each day. We passed several lines of workers, one group hacked open with what looked like a mid-size machete and separated the tough knuckle and claw segments of the cooked lobsters. Another line of about 30 worked on a long mainline extracting meat from shells with tools similar to that found at a dentist office to hook meat from appendages, others inspected the meat to insure it was free from shell fragments.
We passed through one room, stepping through disinfectant, and into others. One area had a conveyer belt of sorts towing along live lobsters, which were inspected for health by another group of workers. “It’s a hands-on job to determine the strength of the lobster,” McKay said, as we walked by the workers, who picked up the lobsters to judge their activity and strength—one indicator is whether they flick their tails actively or are lethargic. The stronger ones are candidates for live sale, McKay said, the others, to the cooker or for dismemberment.
That cooker, while automatic, requires an attentive hand. “Yield is vital (with lobster),” explained McKay, especially since much of a lobster’s weight is the inedible part—the shell. “You’ve got to know your time and temperatures. You cook only until done and no more. A cook that doesn’t pay attention can cost the company tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands (of dollars) per year.”
Raw lobster tails are frozen, brought to freezing temperature quickly in a brine solution to preserve the meat quality, flash frozen at minus 70 degrees through a tunnel freezer, then dunked quickly in water to form a protective ice layer for shipping. The bulk of the tails go to Darden restaurants (Red Lobster among them) and Ruby Tuesday.
In short, much of the lobster business involves removing the trouble inherent with preparing a lobster to eat, and that means efficient labor, packaging innovation and product development—such as “cap-off claws,” with the knuckle end of a lobster claw is removed exposing some of the meat for easy removal, but the rest of the claw remains for plate presentation. “It’s mostly for casinos and hotels,” McKay said. As efficient as that system gets, there is no eliminating or automating the work of getting meat from the lobsters’ exoskeleton.
At some point we stood in the indoor holding areas for live lobsters (outside, there was at least another 1.5 million pounds worth of live lobster in a holding pool). One area was a room with crates stacked on top of each other, cold water—3,400 gallons a minute at 36 degrees Fahrenheit—cascaded down from the ceiling on top of and through the crates (the water is recycled). The room could hold a maximum of 120,000 pounds of lobsters.
From there we walked to a more traditional holding tank—a massive, shallow swimming pool that holds 90,000 pounds of the crustaceans. It’s more labor to move the crates packed with lobster in and out of the pool than the room with the cascading water, McKay said, but that older method is a much quicker way to get the lobsters to that cool temperature, where they go into hibernation mode, clear their guts and can be held for months. “It gives us more flexibility with trucks that don’t follow the daily production schedule,” he added.
From the plant, lobsters and the value-added products are shipped directly to customers or through distributors elsewhere.
A lobster’s life
The plant blockades and protests were coincidental to our group’s arrival, but underscored the tightrope-like existence of anyone dependent on any harvest for a living: a huge harvest can, in fact, be too much of a good thing. And if one group of “harvesters” plays under a different set of rules, then the problem is magnified.
Tack upon that the tricky existence of the lobster itself. It’s a tough creature, to be sure—aggressive, territorial and predatory—and its recent bounty on the east coast of North America is due, in part, to effective conservation efforts, but also the massive overfishing of cod, a major predator of lobster, particularly when the crustacean is in its soft-shell phase.
Lobsters take a while to mature—it takes at least seven years for a lobster to reach one pound, and half that time for each additional pound. Compare that to modern beef cattle finished in an industrial feedlot system (about 18 months), or even grass-fed beef cattle (24 to 30 months). The process of breeding is also lengthy: about two years from the less-than-amorous copulation to egg laying. And out of the 80,000 eggs that female finally lays, only three or four might make it to market size.
Lobsters are susceptible to the changing climate and pollution (they are bottom feeders) just as any other organism. Rising ocean temperatures mess with a lobster’s natural cycles—driving them northward to colder waters, hence the big harvests along the Northeast Atlantic coastline, said Geoff Irvine, the executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada.
The issue that could develop between Canadian and U.S. lobster fisherman, however, has to do with seasonality and a lobster’s growth. For a lobster to grow, it must shed its shell—a tricky process called “molting” that leaves the lobster physically vulnerable. Prior to molting, lobsters starve themselves for about a week and expel water. They shrink, literally, within their exoskeleton, which to make it easier for themselves to pull out of the shell. A crack opens in the back of the body shell, and they slide out. Immediately after shedding their old skeleton, the lobster eats and gorges on seawater to swell itself and push out its new shell while it’s soft.
It takes about two months for the absorbed water to turn to meat and the shell to harden. Canada regulates harvest seasons to accommodate, the U.S. does not. What it means for the lobster is obvious: mortality, survivability. What it means for the consumer of lobster: product quality and price. “You don’t want soft shells,” said Mark Paone, VP of American Fish & Seafood in Minneapolis. The company has been in business for 84 years. “You can eat them, but they’re not as good, the yield is low and they’re fragile—they die (in transport). You want them to live and to molt and grow and get a hard shell on them.”
The brand
It’s with that strict seasonality and resource management that Canada is trying to establish its brand—a brand, according to press materials, is more or less building upon what the world already sees in Canada: a nation that doesn’t fear multi-culturalism, takes care of its environment and is a trustworthy world player.
The branding effort was the whole point of our group spending a week in St. Andrews: we were there to learn and spread word; those of us in the media through our outlets, and the chefs with their purchasing power and large followings.
“We really haven’t done a good job promoting our own brand,” said Geoff Irvine of the Canada’s Lobster Council. In truth, they’re still defining it. The Council, a collaboration of industry partners to develop and improve standards and marketing opportunities, was formed in 2010. Irvine said that they are trying to navigate a fine line between promoting the strength of the Canadian product—hard-shell lobsters harvested in season and sustainably—and alienating its Maine counterparts. Canada benefits from the “Maine” name, too. “There’s a lot of Canadian lobster that gets sold as Maine lobster because the companies that are selling it feel it’s a better way to sell it,” he said. “And you don’t want to mess with that kind of trade.”
Still, Maine is a competitor. And Canada is looking to sell more lobster. The first bit of promoting might be within Canada itself. Canada is a country in which only 32 million people reside—it will always be an exporter. But when 94 percent of its catch leaves the country, more can be done. Also critical to the industry is to grow markets globally. Irvine sees huge potential in Asian markets, which thus far make up only about 6 percent of exports. (More than half the group was from Japan, South Korea, China (Hong Kong), Taiwan and India.)
Beneath all that remains the challenge of maintaining a healthy supply and way of life for the lobster fishing industry. There’s no way around the expense of running a boat: it cost that fisherman about $4 per pound to operate his or her boat. If the harvest is plentiful and price per pound of lobster drops, it’s those fisherman who bear the brunt. The challenge is, Irvine said, is to find room in the market for the larger supply while providing prices that supply a living to those harvesters. “The fact is that we’ve gotten really good at catching lobster—more powerful boats, better traps, better bait,” he said. “The idea is to expand in other markets, focus on quality, and try to get a handle on the landings—but that’s the hardest thing to do, because fishermen never like to land less of anything.”
