The Lobster Trap
The Global Fight for a Seafood on the Brink
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A page-turning examination of how a multi-billion dollar industry creates enormous wealth and endless heartache, at a time when climate change, swings in the market, and greed are impacting fishermen’s livelihoods in new and dramatic ways.
Lobster has been a phenomenal success story, with a commercial fishery that has generated enormous wealth and fuelled appetites for one of the world’s most recognizable luxury foods. The great lobster boom that began in the 1990s has also led to violent fights over who has the right to catch this valuable seafood, including many Indigenous people in Canada, who until recently have been excluded from this industry. Now overfishing, trade wars, and climate change are threatening the future of this fishery in deeply troubling ways.
By 2050, scientists expect that warming ocean waters in the heart of North America’s lobster fishing region will cut catches by two thirds. In some parts of America, there’s hardly any lobster left to catch. Unlike previous collapses, there are few other large-scale wild seafood species left that fishing crews can switch to. The economic upheaval for fishermen and seafood companies alike could devastate coastal communities in both Canada and the United States.
In this deeply reported, resonant, timely book, Greg Mercer takes readers on a fascinating global journey and inside this precarious moment for the lobster industry, to show the money and heartache, and the danger and violence, tied up in it. Along the way, he explores lobster’s remarkable history, the gold-rush mentality that surrounds it, and examines the looming crisis for this most precious shellfish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Investigative reporter Mercer debuts with a deeply researched look at the multibillion-dollar lobster industry as two major forces—constant worldwide demand and climate change—have the potential to spell its doom. He chronicles the history of the North American lobster boom, explaining that the supply of lobsters once seemed limitless; in the 1990s, harvesting them yielded such great quantities that McDonald's restaurants in Canada were able to sell inexpensive "McLobster" sandwiches. Modern technology has allowed for live lobsters to be shipped to restaurants around the world in a matter of days, spurring an unending appetite for the crustaceans that encourages overfishing. At the same time, rising ocean temperatures are hindering reproduction and causing lobsters to become more susceptible to disease. Mercer visits fishing communities across Canada and New England to detail the fierce competition for the dwindling supply of lobsters that many local economies rely on, as well as the dangers fishermen are willing to endure to catch them, including deadly waves that can capsize boats. He grounds this global saga in moving human stories, like that of a lifelong Canadian lobsterman who worries his children won't be able to carry on the family legacy. This is a revelatory account of an industry on the verge of collapse.
