Why Is Lobster So Expensive?

Lobster hasn't always been a luxury -- and prices have the potential to drop again. Learn the history and politics behind these tasty crustaceans in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel Bomb. Here in US, lobsters sold for ten
to twelve dollars a pound, a price range that reflects
lobster being a luxury in our minds and culture. It's
on the menu at fine dining restaurants, in pricey steakhouses,
and in the best New England summer shacks and sandwich shops.
A lobster role can sell for as much as seventy dollars.

(00:25):
But lobster hasn't always been expensive, and current political and
trade policies are not only changing its prices, they're hurting
the US lobster business a long term it may impact
how we even think about the lobster itself. Back in
the seventeenth century, when America was still a bunch of colonies,
colonists wrote about lobsters in the New England area weighing
sixteen to twenty five pounds that's seven to just over

(00:46):
eleven kilograms. Some of the largest weighed twice that and
grew four to six feet that's one to two meters long.
And there were so many lobsters that there claims that
the shellfish would wash up knee deep on Massachusetts shores.
Lobster was so abundant it wasn't worth anything. Really. Colonists
considered lobster cheap eats. It's what you'd eat when there

(01:06):
was nothing else and you didn't want to starve. It
was foisted off on indentured servants, enslaved people, and prisoners,
even pigs. Everyone was embarrassed about eating it. Oysters, by
the way, fell into the same category. Colonists did, however,
see lobster as a resource. It was plentiful, cheap, and
they could make money from it by shipping it back
to Europe. The Dutch had come up with a way

(01:27):
of transport lobster across the Atlantic and keep it fresh.
Organized lobster fisheries opened in Maine in the mid eighteen hundreds,
and lobster canning businesses started and flourished. Near the turn
of the century, main lobster men were landing more than
eleven thousand tons of the critters, and lobster wasn't just
crossing the ocean, but also the nation thanks to the
railroad industry, onboard dining and inland restaurants, where lobster was

(01:50):
served to new audiences as a side dish or salon ingredient.
The experience of dining on a railcar or enjoying seafood
far from a coast helped turn lobster into a luxury
day ish. Over fishing at the beginning of the twentieth
century drove prices up, as did conservation laws in the
mid twentieth century. Long term, the supply of lobster has
been going up. Those conservation laws worked, and Maine has

(02:13):
had a lobster boom that took landings from eighteen million
pounds that's eight million kilograms in nineteen fifty to nearly
a hundred and thirty one million pounds or sixty million
kilograms in twenty sixteen. Main's lobster industry, the largest in
the United States, contributes one point for billion dollars to
the state's economy every year. And that's a good thing too,
because in recent years, lobster industry representatives from Maine have

(02:36):
built international demand for their products, and China has been
poised to purchase significant amounts of lobster. In the first
two quarters of twenty seventeen, China imported thirty nine point
five million dollars worth of live lobster. The best year
to date, and between January and June of eighteen, the
US sold eighty seven million dollars in live lobster to China.
But the dollar signs that people in Main's lobster industry

(02:59):
we're seeing finished. After the Trump administration imposed tariffs that
caused China to retaliate with tariffs of its own, including
a tariff on US lobster. The impact of the tariffs
is dramatic. In June, live lobster exports to China topped
eleven point eight million dollars. In July, the first month
under the new tariffs, exports to China dropped to four

(03:20):
point two million dollars, lower than the amount shipped in
July the year before. The Chinese and Canadians have even
created a workaround. As Canada's supply goes through its seasonal drop,
they're buying US lobster and selling it to China. We
spoke with John Sackton, editor and publisher of Seafood News,
via email. He said the US lobster industry is at

(03:41):
an extreme disadvantage with international trade right now, as we
face tariffs in Europe and China, while the Canadians don't.
This means the US must look for niche markets like
Singapore or Korea. With the US supply higher than it's
ever been and China's demands suddenly dropping to below levels,
you might think law stir may become painfully abundant and cheap,

(04:02):
But the U s economy is strong and lobster industry
experts say there's not only opportunity, but workarounds. Sacton said,
what is happening to lobster prices is unclear because there
are many contradictory factors. Maine has lost the ability to
ship lobsters to China, but on the other hand, demand
for lobster tail is very strong and these are processed

(04:23):
in Canada, so there's continued strong demand from processors for
main lobster. So will we see a shift in the
price and culture of lobster? Sacton reported that the industry
was waiting to see how live lobster prices fared over
the holiday season, and that their strategies might change accordingly.
But we wonder whether culture is as flexible as the market.

(04:45):
Would you buy a nick lobster? Today's episode was written
by Sean Chavis and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
on this and lots of other Wicked Wesson topics, visit
our home planet, how stuff Works dot com