Coronavirus won’t impact lobster industry for long, says minister
Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Keith Colwell said last week the decreased demand for live lobster in China because of the coronavirus will cause only a “minor blip” for the province’s industry.
“We have processors in place that can process the lobster, we have adequate freezing capacity,” the minister said last Wednesday. “We have a standard for lobster holding facilities, a very high standard, the only one in the world like it. People that have those can hold a lobster for a long period of time, and the lobster is just the same as when it came out of the water.”
Surrounded by puns involving the words claw, crawl and “shellabration,” Colwell was taking part in an event at the Nova Scotia Legislature to declare Feb. 28 Nova Scotia Lobster Day.
“I really feel bad for the people in China, we’ve made a lot of friends in China and I hope they’re all well. I think it’s positive the Chinese have taken the course they have to make sure the virus doesn’t spread to other parts of the world. I commend them for that,” he said. “This will be on a temporary basis, because it’s not about our lobster quality, it’s not about them not wanting it, it’s just quarantines that they have in place so we can’t ship anything in. And not only us, it’s everything that’s going into the country.”
Until things get back to normal in China, Colwell said his department is suggesting to the industry a contingency plan of processing more lobster instead of exporting it live.
“We’re working with the industry, as we always do,” he said. “One of the operations has some mothballed equipment they’re going to put back in use to process lobster. Once it’s processed, they can hold it for an extended period of time.
The market’s there for it. We have the market, have it in place, just can’t ship it.”
Processed lobsters are worth more than live ones, the minister said, pointing out that the province’s entire fishing industry was worth $2.3 billion in exports last year, and crediting “very aggressive marketing” all over the world with the popularity of lobster.
In the 12-month period ending November 2019, Nova Scotia exported just over $1.2 billion in lobster, almost 17 per cent more than the previous 12-month period.
“We’ve been doing markets in Europe, really working on Europe, on other parts of Asia,” said Colwell. “We’re into Vietnam, which is really an emerging market for us now, probably where China was ten years ago. We’re looking at Korea, Japan, all other parts of the world we’re marketing lobster. Over 80 countries.
“It’s a really hard life and the fishermen deserve to make the money they do. Thankfully, they’re making a good income now. We’ve seen the price of a lobster license increase substantially over the last few years, to the point we had to change our loan board limits on loans so we could accommodate the industry and the young people that are going into the industry.”
Colwell said he also talked lobster with his federal counterpart last week. He does think prices will continue to drop.
“As long as we keep the price six dollars or above, the fishermen still make a good income,” he said.
At Tangier Lobster, managing director Stewart Lamont said he was paying $8 a pound on the wharf last week, compared with $10-plus the previous week.
“That is company specific. Every company would have its own policy,” said Tangier, pointing out that catches at this time of year are lower than in December, and also lower than they are likely to be in April and May. “It’s important to remember that a fisherman’s income is price per pound times pounds landed.”