Maine Lobstermen Are Casting Their Nets for New World Markets

Like generations of their forebears, the lobstermen of Penobscot Bay fish the cold, blue Atlantic waters seven days a week at the height of the lobster season.

“We have more markets right now than we have lobsters,” says Burt Philbrick, gulping a light beer between pumping gas and shoveling fish heads, which are used for bait.

“I like it this time of year, when all the summer people leave and we can get down to fishing,” said Philbrick, co-owner with his brother, Tom, of the Ship to Shore wharf here.

Philbrick’s provincialism is pure “down East” orneriness in a state that gives the lobster nearly official status. A lobster adorns Maine automobile license plates, fast-food restaurants serve lobsterburgers and billboards call lobster “plain, simple American food.”

But Maine’s $200-million-a-year lobster industry, faced with rising operating costs, uncertain supplies and prices and competition from Canada and Massachusetts, is looking for new world markets far beyond the Atlantic.

For the Philbrick brothers, business bustles during the fall lobster harvest. They are what’s known along Maine’s 3,000-mile coast as wharf dealers. They buy from the lobstermen and sell to wholesalers, who increasingly rely on international airlines to speed live Maine lobsters to customers in Asia and Europe.

One of the best customers is Japan, which imports about 3,000 tons of lobster from the United States and Canada every year. One fancy lobster dish at a swank Tokyo hotel costs $70.

Maine’s 6,900 lobstermen say had to sail farther this year to drop their traps, but were catching fewer of the prized American species, Homarus americanus , which commands high prices wherever it is served.

The 1992 catch in Maine was down considerably from 1991’s record haul of 30.8 million pounds, said Jay Krouse, a biologist with the Maine Marine Resources Department. The previous record was 28.1 million pounds in 1990.

Not since the 24.5 million-pound catch of 1889 had the harvest been so large.

Biologists blame the reduced 1992 harvest on a chilly summer that slightly lowered water temperatures. As a result, the heat-sensitive lobsters delayed shedding their shells and gaining weight.

While Maine officials said they do not know just how far off the lobster catch was, they do know there was an 11% drop during the first six months of 1992.

Even with lower harvest, Maine lobstermen aren’t complaining about this year’s wholesale price--an average of $2.50 a pound, up almost 20% over the 1991 price.

Many Owls Head fishermen say they can earn as much as $100,000 in a good year and about $60,000 during a so-so season, especially if they supplement their lobstering by fishing for scallops, shrimp or sea urchins.

The current prosperity is deceptive. Part of the need for expanded markets, according to a study by the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, is simple economic necessity.

“The harvesters and the dealers have lost millions and millions of dollars,” said the institute’s David Dow. “The lobster industry is really struggling with how to cope with these peaks and valleys.”

No one knows this better than the fishermen as they unloaded their catch at the Philbrick brothers’ wharf. Tom Philbrick said, “Our lobstermen have started to sell a lot of sea urchins to Japan and Korea.”

Residents of Owls Head lose some of their natural reserve when anything disrupts their time-tested way of doing things.

Unlike their fathers and grandfathers, for four years in a row they have seen--and smelled--three giant Russian fish-processing ships anchored a few miles offshore, inside U.S. territorial waters.

“The Russians are cleaning us out of pogies,” complained Burt Philbrick.

Pogy is Maine’s word for menhaden, a small member of the perch family. U.S. fishermen sell pogies and herring to the Russians, who turn them into fish meal and foul-smelling oil.

Lobstermen depend on pogies for bait. But Philbrick wasn’t the only local with a complaint. Residents of Owls Head and neighboring Rockland recoil at the stench from the Russian vessels when the wind blows out of the northeast.

For most lobstermen, the Russians are just a nuisance during the busiest time of the year.

“The fishermen are happy to pick up a few extra bucks from the Russians,” said Joe Braw, who operates more than 600 lobster traps out of Matinicus Island. “It’s a tough way to make a living.”