A seasonal check-in for Maine’s lobster industry

In this edition of Marketplace’s Economic Pulse, we take a look at Maine’s lobster industry, where fisheries play a central role in the state’s economy. In 2024, Maine’s commercial fisheries brought in roughly $700 million in value, with lobster making up the largest share of that total.

Marketplace’s David Brancaccio spoke with Sonny Beal, a lobsterman and member of the board of directors at the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, about the state of the industry. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: I guess it's like actors who never say the name of the Scottish Shakespeare play, because bad things will then happen. What is it that lobster folks stay away from the precise number of how their catch was?

Sonny Beal: We're usually pretty secretive on what we catch, because if somebody finds out that you’re doing good, they might move in on your territory and stuff. So we try to keep it kind of hush-hush.

Brancaccio: Yeah. And as it refers to your business, what's the vibe?

Beal: The catch was down a little bit this season. It was down about 30% statewide. We can't have record years every year, so, you know, we kind of just take it for what it is. The price is down a little bit from last year, but last year was a record price. So we're still chugging along. And we have good years and bad years, and we take it as it goes.

Brancaccio: Now, when you're out in the ocean doing your work, it is not a free-for-all. Some of it is strict custom, you know — you don't mess with anybody else's traps. But some of it is formal government regulation, and I know that is something that people in your business have to plan around and compensate for, and sometimes has costs.

Beal: Yes, that's correct. Twenty years ago or so, we had to switch from floating ground lines to sinking ground lines — the ground lines are the lines in between your traps on bottom. And also, you know, the rope doesn't last as long, where it’s chafing on bottom. So, it's rope that we have to buy every single year.

We have to buy breakaway devices for our buoys, so if a whale gets caught in the buoy, the device breaks, the buoy pops off, [and] the whale doesn't get entangled. We now have to put breakaway links, plastic links, in our lines. So if the buoy doesn't break, then the line will break. And actually, they said that, now that we have the link in our line, we don't need the link in our buoy. So it's just, you know — they're going right around Robin Hood's barn kind of a deal.

We also have to put colored tracers in our lines. Like, where I fish, I have to have a purple tracer. And then when I fish out in federal waters, I have to have a green tracer in my line, and I have to have three of those from buoy to trap. So we're highly regulated, that's for sure.

Brancaccio: And you've been doing this since you were a kid. I think you have two children, a teenager, and maybe college-age?

Beal: I have two boys — 18 and 20 years old, yes.

Brancaccio: So what do they think about getting into this business?

Beal: It's one of those things, when they say, you got salt in your veins — that's really a thing. I was kind of, you know, disappointed — not disappointed —  but, well, my youngest son didn't go to college, and now my oldest son wants to come home and go fishing. I always told them, I said, “I wish you guys would use your brain and not your back.” And my wife said, you know, she says you can't raise these guys fishing and being on the ocean and expect them not to do it when they get older.