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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bomb. Here in US, lobsters sold for ten

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Speaker 1: to twelve dollars a pound, a price range that reflects

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Speaker 1: lobster being a luxury in our minds and culture. It's

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Speaker 1: on the menu at fine dining restaurants, in pricey steakhouses,

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Speaker 1: and in the best New England summer shacks and sandwich shops.

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Speaker 1: A lobster role can sell for as much as seventy dollars.

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Speaker 1: But lobster hasn't always been expensive, and current political and

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Speaker 1: trade policies are not only changing its prices, they're hurting

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Speaker 1: the US lobster business a long term it may impact

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Speaker 1: how we even think about the lobster itself. Back in

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Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, when America was still a bunch of colonies,

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Speaker 1: colonists wrote about lobsters in the New England area weighing

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Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty five pounds that's seven to just over

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Speaker 1: eleven kilograms. Some of the largest weighed twice that and

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Speaker 1: grew four to six feet that's one to two meters long.

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Speaker 1: And there were so many lobsters that there claims that

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Speaker 1: the shellfish would wash up knee deep on Massachusetts shores.

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Speaker 1: Lobster was so abundant it wasn't worth anything. Really. Colonists

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Speaker 1: considered lobster cheap eats. It's what you'd eat when there

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Speaker 1: was nothing else and you didn't want to starve. It

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Speaker 1: was foisted off on indentured servants, enslaved people, and prisoners,

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Speaker 1: even pigs. Everyone was embarrassed about eating it. Oysters, by

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Speaker 1: the way, fell into the same category. Colonists did, however,

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Speaker 1: see lobster as a resource. It was plentiful, cheap, and

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Speaker 1: they could make money from it by shipping it back

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Speaker 1: to Europe. The Dutch had come up with a way

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Speaker 1: of transport lobster across the Atlantic and keep it fresh.

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Speaker 1: Organized lobster fisheries opened in Maine in the mid eighteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: and lobster canning businesses started and flourished. Near the turn

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Speaker 1: of the century, main lobster men were landing more than

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Speaker 1: eleven thousand tons of the critters, and lobster wasn't just

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Speaker 1: crossing the ocean, but also the nation thanks to the

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Speaker 1: railroad industry, onboard dining and inland restaurants, where lobster was

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Speaker 1: served to new audiences as a side dish or salon ingredient.

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Speaker 1: The experience of dining on a railcar or enjoying seafood

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Speaker 1: far from a coast helped turn lobster into a luxury

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Speaker 1: day ish. Over fishing at the beginning of the twentieth

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Speaker 1: century drove prices up, as did conservation laws in the

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Speaker 1: mid twentieth century. Long term, the supply of lobster has

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Speaker 1: been going up. Those conservation laws worked, and Maine has

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Speaker 1: had a lobster boom that took landings from eighteen million

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Speaker 1: pounds that's eight million kilograms in nineteen fifty to nearly

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Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty one million pounds or sixty million

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Speaker 1: kilograms in twenty sixteen. Main's lobster industry, the largest in

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Speaker 1: the United States, contributes one point for billion dollars to

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Speaker 1: the state's economy every year. And that's a good thing too,

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Speaker 1: because in recent years, lobster industry representatives from Maine have

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Speaker 1: built international demand for their products, and China has been

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Speaker 1: poised to purchase significant amounts of lobster. In the first

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Speaker 1: two quarters of twenty seventeen, China imported thirty nine point

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Speaker 1: five million dollars worth of live lobster. The best year

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Speaker 1: to date, and between January and June of eighteen, the

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Speaker 1: US sold eighty seven million dollars in live lobster to China.

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Speaker 1: But the dollar signs that people in Main's lobster industry

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Speaker 1: we're seeing finished. After the Trump administration imposed tariffs that

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Speaker 1: caused China to retaliate with tariffs of its own, including

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Speaker 1: a tariff on US lobster. The impact of the tariffs

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Speaker 1: is dramatic. In June, live lobster exports to China topped

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Speaker 1: eleven point eight million dollars. In July, the first month

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Speaker 1: under the new tariffs, exports to China dropped to four

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Speaker 1: point two million dollars, lower than the amount shipped in

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Speaker 1: July the year before. The Chinese and Canadians have even

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Speaker 1: created a workaround. As Canada's supply goes through its seasonal drop,

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Speaker 1: they're buying US lobster and selling it to China. We

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Speaker 1: spoke with John Sackton, editor and publisher of Seafood News,

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Speaker 1: via email. He said the US lobster industry is at

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Speaker 1: an extreme disadvantage with international trade right now, as we

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Speaker 1: face tariffs in Europe and China, while the Canadians don't.

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Speaker 1: This means the US must look for niche markets like

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Speaker 1: Singapore or Korea. With the US supply higher than it's

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Speaker 1: ever been and China's demands suddenly dropping to below levels,

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Speaker 1: you might think law stir may become painfully abundant and cheap,

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Speaker 1: But the U s economy is strong and lobster industry

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Speaker 1: experts say there's not only opportunity, but workarounds. Sacton said,

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Speaker 1: what is happening to lobster prices is unclear because there

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Speaker 1: are many contradictory factors. Maine has lost the ability to

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Speaker 1: ship lobsters to China, but on the other hand, demand

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Speaker 1: for lobster tail is very strong and these are processed

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Speaker 1: in Canada, so there's continued strong demand from processors for

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Speaker 1: main lobster. So will we see a shift in the

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Speaker 1: price and culture of lobster? Sacton reported that the industry

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Speaker 1: was waiting to see how live lobster prices fared over

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Speaker 1: the holiday season, and that their strategies might change accordingly.

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Speaker 1: But we wonder whether culture is as flexible as the market.

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Speaker 1: Would you buy a nick lobster? Today's episode was written

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Speaker 1: by Sean Chavis and produced by Tyler Clang. For more

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Speaker 1: on this and lots of other Wicked Wesson topics, visit

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Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff Works dot com