![]() “With frozen product, you can equalize the pricing as it travels down the chain, because instead of trying to keep daily fluctuations separate, they just average ‘em all. “The markets are basically set by the big guys, the Costcos of the world,” he says, which helps customers on a budget. “It’s all caught and frozen in this window of time,” says Billings, “and that’s the product you have to last until the next June.” That means that there’s one negotiating time of year. Right now in Bristol Bay, Alaska, the brief sockeye salmon season is on. And people have realized that - if it’s frozen at sea right away - it’s pretty darn good.” Ice, ice, baby: The frozen factor A very, very high percentage of fish now comes frozen. “But that taught people a lot about frozen. “Supermarkets got rid of their fresh seafood counters, and a lot of those never came back because now they can’t get help,” says Billings, who was assistant vice president of meat and seafood at BJ’s before landing at ButcherBox. The pandemic also affected domestic seafood sales. So our Maine lobster sales there have been very, very slow relative to what they were pre-pandemic.” But for the last three years, China has been shut down with a zero-COVID policy. “For that reason, they’re usually worth a dollar or two more per pound than a soft-shell lobster. consumers, Brown says, China is a huge market for live lobster from Maine, but usually only hard shells can survive the journey. As one example that might not occur to U.S. But once a lobster is sold off a boat like his, it is subject to a whole new world of factors that affect price, from politics to trade tariffs. “It’s just not worth it for fishermen to risk their lives." Local market, global tradeīrown, who has worked in the same area since he was a kid, says it is typical for fishermen to spend their entire career in one location. Traditional New England boats can’t withstand winter storms or even the nor’easters and hurricane seasons that begin in the fall, says Wong. Plus, lobsters are physically harder to harvest in winter because they go deeper in the water, where the temperature is actually warmer than it is up near the surface. “That’s why we have sweet Maine lobsters that are really cheap in the summertime for a domestic market, but the same lobsters get expensive in the wintertime with the cold,” Wong explains. But much of what is caught in warmer months tends to be soft shell, after the crustaceans have shed, which don’t travel well. ![]() ![]() As summer rolls on, we’ll enter peak lobster and crab season, when consumers will find prices at their lowest due to an abundance of supply. Or vice versa where it says it’s going to be beautiful, and I end up getting my butt kicked.” But there are days now when I don’t go out, and then the marine forecast was wrong and I kick myself all day long. “I don’t get as upset about missing bad weather days after that whole experience, I can assure you. He had to be rescued by the Coast Guard - not an experience any fisherman is looking to repeat. When the weather is bad, there will probably not be a lot of people going out and you might be able to get a better price for your product, but there’s also a safety component involved.”īrown reflects on a day when he went out despite an iffy forecast and his boat flipped. “It’s a struggle because there is always that incentive to push the limit. “Say the wind kicks up in the late morning - that could drive all the boats back into port without a full day’s catch,” Brown says. When conditions are good, there's a rush to get out on the water, and supply that day will be high. “Wild-caught fisheries are subject to the whims of Mother Nature, and that’s a big part of what goes into that market price,” Brown says. The first thing most harvesters look at when they wake up in the morning is the forecast. So, let’s do a deep dive into the factors that have the biggest impact. “But when I see that label, I think of something that can change very quickly.”īrown, Billings and Wong agree that diners would have a deeper appreciation for market price items if they knew how much contributes to the number on the bill. “Whenever you look at a price on a menu, whether it’s written down in a dollar amount or it says ‘MP,’ it is still an example of market price,” Brown points out. Curt Brown, lobsterman and marine biologist at Ready Seafood. “When customers see a market price item on the menu, I wish they knew more of the story behind what went into getting that product to market: harvesting it out on the water, the care we take in managing our resources, the effort and risk that goes into catching those lobsters on a daily basis,” says Curt Brown, a lobsterman and marine biologist at Ready Seafood, which sends lobster from coastal Maine around the world.
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