Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel Bomb. Here in US, lobsters sold for ten to twelve dollars a pound, a price range that reflects lobster being a luxury in our minds and culture. It's on the menu at fine dining restaurants, in pricey steakhouses, and in the best New England summer shacks and sandwich shops. A lobster role can sell for as much as seventy dollars.
But lobster hasn't always been expensive, and current political and trade policies are not only changing its prices, they're hurting the US lobster business a long term it may impact how we even think about the lobster itself. Back in the seventeenth century, when America was still a bunch of colonies, colonists wrote about lobsters in the New England area weighing sixteen to twenty five pounds that's seven to just over
eleven kilograms. Some of the largest weighed twice that and grew four to six feet that's one to two meters long. And there were so many lobsters that there claims that the shellfish would wash up knee deep on Massachusetts shores. Lobster was so abundant it wasn't worth anything. Really. Colonists considered lobster cheap eats. It's what you'd eat when there was nothing else and you didn't want to starve. It was foisted off on indentured servants, enslaved people, and prisoners,
even pigs. Everyone was embarrassed about eating it. Oysters, by the way, fell into the same category. Colonists did, however, see lobster as a resource. It was plentiful, cheap, and they could make money from it by shipping it back to Europe. The Dutch had come up with a way of transport lobster across the Atlantic and keep it fresh. Organized lobster fisheries opened in Maine in the mid eighteen hundreds,
and lobster canning businesses started and flourished. Near the turn of the century, main lobster men were landing more than eleven thousand tons of the critters, and lobster wasn't just crossing the ocean, but also the nation thanks to the railroad industry, onboard dining and inland restaurants, where lobster was served to new audiences as a side dish or salon ingredient. The experience of dining on a railcar or enjoying seafood far from a coast helped turn lobster into a luxury
day ish. Over fishing at the beginning of the twentieth century drove prices up, as did conservation laws in the mid twentieth century. Long term, the supply of lobster has been going up. Those conservation laws worked, and Maine has had a lobster boom that took landings from eighteen million pounds that's eight million kilograms in nineteen fifty to nearly a hundred and thirty one million pounds or sixty million
kilograms in twenty sixteen. Main's lobster industry, the largest in the United States, contributes one point for billion dollars to the state's economy every year. And that's a good thing too, because in recent years, lobster industry representatives from Maine have built international demand for their products, and China has been poised to purchase significant amounts of lobster. In the first two quarters of twenty seventeen, China imported thirty nine point
five million dollars worth of live lobster. The best year to date, and between January and June of eighteen, the US sold eighty seven million dollars in live lobster to China. But the dollar signs that people in Main's lobster industry we're seeing finished. After the Trump administration imposed tariffs that caused China to retaliate with tariffs of its own, including a tariff on US lobster. The impact of the tariffs is dramatic. In June, live lobster exports to China topped
eleven point eight million dollars. In July, the first month under the new tariffs, exports to China dropped to four point two million dollars, lower than the amount shipped in July the year before. The Chinese and Canadians have even created a workaround. As Canada's supply goes through its seasonal drop, they're buying US lobster and selling it to China. We spoke with John Sackton, editor and publisher of Seafood News,
via email. He said the US lobster industry is at an extreme disadvantage with international trade right now, as we face tariffs in Europe and China, while the Canadians don't. This means the US must look for niche markets like Singapore or Korea. With the US supply higher than it's ever been and China's demands suddenly dropping to below levels, you might think law stir may become painfully abundant and cheap, But the U s economy is strong and lobster industry
experts say there's not only opportunity, but workarounds. Sacton said, what is happening to lobster prices is unclear because there are many contradictory factors. Maine has lost the ability to ship lobsters to China, but on the other hand, demand for lobster tail is very strong and these are processed in Canada, so there's continued strong demand from processors for main lobster. So will we see a shift in the
price and culture of lobster? Sacton reported that the industry was waiting to see how live lobster prices fared over the holiday season, and that their strategies might change accordingly. But we wonder whether culture is as flexible as the market. Would you buy a nick lobster? Today's episode was written by Sean Chavis and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other Wicked Wesson topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com