Tag Archives: Spiny Lobster season
Florida Spiny lobster season ends
Bill Kelly says the spiny lobster fishery is like real estate. “Location is everything,” said Kelly, executive director of the Florida Keys Fishermen’s Association. “We’re seeing a significant season, a good season for spiny lobster and stone crab harvest in the Upper Keys and [mainland] South Florida. We’re also seeing that in the extreme Lower Keys and down into the Marquesas and the Tortugas.” The lockdowns in China early during the pandemic didn’t help the industry either. Kelly said China buys about 80% of the live spiny lobsters, and they pay top dollar. >click to read< 11:39
California Lobster season debuts amid changing seafood industry
It’s California spiny lobster season, from October through mid-March. Local fishermen and seafood retailers are celebrating its arrival, announcing the happy news that prices are the lowest in many years and the supply plentiful. What’s changed? In recent years, more than 95 percent of these well-loved California crustaceans were shipped to China, leaving only high-priced, limited quantities for local consumption. Rumors circulated that some fishermen were contemplating suspending operations, discouraged by their lost markets. Then, just as quickly, attitudes changed, as reality sank in. “People have to eat. If we don’t fish, what are people going to eat?” >click to read< 09:40
Spiny Lobster season in the Florida Keys: Not as strong, not a disaster
One month remains in the regular lobster season but many of the traps put out by the Florida Keys commercial fleet are back on the hill — meaning pulled ashore until next summer. “We’re bringing in about 235 traps now from 200 feet of water,” Conch Key commercial fisherman Gary Nichols said Tuesday. “This season has been kind of fairly good,” Nichols reported from aboard his 43-foot boat. “It’s not as good as the last couple of years and the market has been softer.” Tom Hill at Key Largo Fisheries agreed, “It hasn’t been a bad year, but it’s not as robust as it has been. I think we have had less production than in the past few seasons.”,, The Asian market for live Florida lobster, which buoyed the fleet after the economic recession, remains a critical component of the fishing economy but was not as profitable as in the past seven to eight years. continue reading the story here 10:17
