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New Size Laws Squeeze Maine Lobster Dealers

July 18, 2011 - Augusta - Maine lobster dealers are starting to feel the pinch of new laws in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey that bar the possession of some lobsters that are of legal size in Maine.

The new laws say that lobsters' bodies must be at least 3 3/8 inches long. In Maine, the minimum size for a lobster is 3¼ inches long.

An eighth of an inch may not seem like much, but complying with laws requiring different minimum sizes is causing headaches for Maine dealers, especially when dealing with lobster "chicks," the smallest ones on the market.

"It's an annoyance," said Dick Douty of Douty Brothers in Portland.

The laws went into effect earlier this year, but summer is when lobster sales peak, meaning the difference in legal sizes is just starting to hit home.

The New York-New Jersey-Connecticut laws specify possession, meaning that it's a violation if someone is found with a lobster that's too small, rather than a law aimed only at the minimum size for lobsters caught in the states' waters. So it applies to lobsters shipped into the three states as well as those caught locally.

It wasn't immediately clear how much of the Maine lobster harvest goes to those three markets. Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen's Association, was not available for comment Friday.

Maine lobsters are usually measured after they're removed from a trap onboard a lobster boat. Lobsters that are too small are supposed to be tossed back into the water.

The law means Douty Brothers has to re-measure small lobsters that it sends to dealers in the New York area, Douty said. Often, the company tries to persuade customers to simply buy slightly larger lobsters so there's no question about their legality. That also saves the company the trouble of re-measuring hundreds of lobsters.

"It creates a lot of extra work," said Mike Coffill, operations manager for Ready Seafood. "It creates more labor and can kill your margin."

The law also means "you've lost that low-end market" for the smallest lobsters, said Peter McAleney, owner of New Meadows Lobster in Portland.

The inability to sell those lobsters in the three-state area has pushed prices in that segment of the market down a bit, McAleney said, although a bigger factor might be the lobsters that molted in June were a little slow to emerge this year.

Usually, those soft-shelled lobsters come out from hiding places before July Fourth, he said. They're hungry and head right to baited traps, he said, resulting in plenty of lobsters for holiday vacationers.

This year, lobstermen's traps starting filling up on the Fourth, and by the time they headed back to shore with their catch, many of the vacationers had left.

"We missed it by a day," McAleney said. "Who's going to buy lobster on Tuesday morning?"

Edward Murphy, Portland Press Herald, July 2011


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