When Leonard Garnett of Steuben crossed the border into New Brunswick on the morning of Aug. 2, hauling over 36,000 pounds of lobster to the Shediac Lobster Shop processing plant, he had no idea what he was driving into. Northumberland Strait lobster fishermen, a week away from starting their 10-week harvest season, were told not to expect to get over $2.50 a pound and be lucky to have a market at all. For some, this was the first time they had heard of the glut of low-price lobsters from Maine flooding their processing plants. They organized that evening, determined to shut down all processing plants in New Brunswick and two in Prince Edward Island in order to drive price and demand for Canadian lobsters back up.
“I heard people hollering,” said Garnett, who was waking up from a nap and waiting to unload. “I did not quite understand them (they were all speaking French) but I knew they were mad.” After closing down two plants in nearby Cap-Pele, the protesters moved in on Garnett’s truck, attracting a crowd of over 200 fishermen and their supporters, the media and 16 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers.
Standing next to a “USA lobster not wanted in Canada” sign, harvester representative Morris Martin said, “We want the lobster to rot. They are overstocking our plants.” Francious Mazorelle, another protester, explained that once the price is set, it tends to stay the same. “Nothing is set yet, but we are hearing $2.75 or $3. We can’t work for that,” he said. In Canada, unlike the U.S., the price for lobster is set at the beginning of the season.
According to RCMP media specialist Cpl. Chantal Farrah, the Shediac processor finally requested that Garnett’s truck leave the premises and was escorted by an RCMP patrol car. At the time, the crowd believed the truck was headed back to Maine. They took a collection for gas in order for one car to follow it to the border.
On the other side of Moncton, the patrol car turned off and Garnett, directed by his dealer, crossed over to Nova Scotia by way of the Digby Ferry from St John. According to Garnett, the car following him turned away at the ferry landing. The next day the lobsters were offloaded in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia at a facility owned by U.S. dealer Garbo Lobster.
“We lost 25 percent,” said Pete Daley, vice president of Garbo Lobster, referring to the product held up in transit. Garbo Lobster is headquartered in Connecticut and is the country’s largest live lobster distributor. When news broke of the protest and plant shutdowns, he stopped sending trucks into Canada.
A week later Daley was still sending most product to the live market, although he admitted the quality was still not good for long-distance shipment. Clearly distressed by the emotionally charged situation and wishing that “everyone would just go back to work,” Daley worried that this slowdown would affect the industry as a whole. “You have this flow and when it starts to trickle, you can expect trouble,” he said.
In a typical year, over half of Maine’s lobster is shipped to Canada for processing and 80-85 percent of the lobster processed in Canada is shipped back across the border to be marketed through the United States. “The border is just a stumbling block,” Daley said during the impasse.
In New Brunswick, early negotiations between government, fishermen and processors broke down when no agreement on price was reached. Rumors circulated that the government had offered to add on to the processors’ price. According the Christian Brun of the Maritime Fishermen’s Union, who attended the meetings, “There was never any talk of money coming from government.” Protests continued but moved to the provincial fisheries building in Fredericton, where traps were packed into offices.
In the United States, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking for federal intervention. Whatever or whoever opened the jam—one trucker delivering bait to Eastport credits Tim Doyle of the Maine Motor Transport Association—by Aug. 9, a court injunction was granted at the request of the New Brunswick processors to limit protests on their properties. The dealers and distributors in Maine began lining up new shipments into Canada.
Brun spoke on the eve of the final settlement between the fishermen and processors. “I remain optimistic that we are going to get through this year,” he said. In the end, an additional 50 cents per lobster, bringing the price to $3 per pound for processed “canners” and $3.50 per pound for those that go to the live market, was promised to the harvesters. Half of these additional private funds will come from the processors and will matched by the union. The delayed season started on Aug. 13.
Leslie Bowman is a freelance writer and photographer living in Trescott.