Lobster

There's been a huge season for lobster, so the fishermen are bringing in way more than most years and that drives the wholesale price down. NORMALLY this translates to a lower market price but because lobster is seen as such a luxury product, the markets are not dropping the price very much.

Some fishermen are risking huge fines to sell directly to the public, since in some areas it's illegal, they're only licensed to sell wholesale. But generally it's not enforced.

In general, doubling the price of the product on live crab/lobster/crawfish is normal. Sometimes the mark-up is higher, depending on several factors. The markets can't sell dead product(when it's supposed to be live), so if a lobster dies, it's thrown out as trash. You can't eat it because they turn "bad" almost as soon as they die. And of course, one dead in a batch will poison more of the live ones in a exponential growth pattern in a holding tank/bin/sack. This is especially true with water tanks(like lobsters). So any dead loss at the merchant cuts the profit and can cut it horribly fast if they aren't on the case constantly.

That's one reason why live lobster/crab is always "fresh" from the water... the longer it's setting, the higher the chance of dead loss, and thus the less profit there is.

Probably way too much info... sorry.

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Originally Posted by Mike41793

Who buys frozen lobster tails? Yuck!

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Good question, but you sure can't buy live lobster at a grocery store in the most inland state in the US like we had all over when I lived 40 minutes from the ocean.

Odd I guess the price isn't just low here. It is crazy with the price of gas in my region (123.3 per L $4.7 per us gal) it is hard to understand how they are making a living. I guess they had good years a few years ago.

I love octopus and crab both, lobster and crab are quite close in taste to me but the fresh crab is hard to come by in this area the little crab we have doesn't give much meat. Frozen is just not as good, even Lobster from a pound (lobster pound where they keep the lobster before sale) isn't as good. I bought mine from the parking lot by the wharf where the boats tie up.

I like most seafood to be honest, not a big fan of salmon but past that.

wolfy-hound all true in my case fresh is out of the ocean never been in the lobster pound.

Where I am they gave up on the illegal trade if it is the actually fisherman selling or the boat owner. There is some crazy variant the only the lawyers know. We have seen low prices for years last year at one point they were 2$ a pound and the year before about what they were this year. The licences are well over 100000 to buy and the season is short only a few weeks at 3$ a pound they hardly make enough to pay loan payments and the guys how have them are going bankrupt. The old families are ok as the licence is long since paid it is just the boat and gas to cover. I was interested to see if it was a local issue or farther reaching. We have two large grocery store chains who have almost wiped out the smaller ones and they basically price match all the time. It looks like it will be a good market price dynamic in the near future. Clearly it is not localized.