Justin Fox, Columnist

Maine's Lobster Tide Might Be Ebbing

An industry that has basked in its cool-water-loving catch starts feeling some heat.

March 23, 2018 at 4:00 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Tasty, at a price.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

The numbers came in earlier this month on Maine's 2017 lobster harvest. By historical standards, the 110.8 million-pound, $434 million haul was pretty spectacular. But it was a lot lower than 2016's 132.5 million-pound, $540 million record, and it was another sign that the Great Lobster Boom that has surprised and delighted Maine's lobster fishermen since the 1990s -- and brought lobster rolls to diners from coast to coast -- may be giving way to ... something else.

The lobster boom does not seem to be the result of overfishing; Maine's lobster fishermen figured out a set of rules decades ago that appear to allow them to manage the catch sustainably.1521478096684 There are just lots and lots more lobsters off the coast of Maine than there used to be. Why? In a column last spring, I listed four reasons that I'd heard during a trip to Maine: