Lobster forecast shelved after industry complaints
Foto: Courtesy / Tom Thai, Flickr
Gulf of Maine Research Institute has scrapped its annual lobster season forecast, after complaints from the lobster industry that it was adding "unwanted" complexity to their overseas marketing efforts.
Several years after launching a lobster season forecast intended to help fishermen, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute will scrap the forecast.
Maine Public reported that the GMRI report, which was launched after an unusual 2012 season, offered what some in the industry said was inaccurate timing or information. It also had the unintended effect of signaling buyers in key markets like Asia how the price of lobster might be affected by conditions.
Annie Tselikis, executive director of the Maine Lobster Dealers Association, says GMRI’s predictions “added an unwanted extra bit of complexity to the system,” as she learned at a trade show in Boston.
“So there you are at Boston with your customers from South Korea and China and throughout Europe and other nations throughout Southeast Asia. And everybody has Google alerts now and so everybody saw that story and thought ‘Great, we’re going into this market looking for cheap lobsters and that just was not the case,’” she told Maine Public.
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