Let’s look at the lobster fishing in Canada. I have a unique view on the entire industry as personally owning vessels (live lobster), processing operations (live lobster) and exporting (again live lobster) to around the world. This is a LUXERY item and in a world that is going through the worse financial crisis in many generations, is not need as a food staple!
I have bitten my tongue too long on hearing all the reports of poor fishermen, poor processors, etc… Listen when the price was $6-7 per lb and boats catching 50-75k pounds maybe someone should have saved a few dollars for a rainy day. The fishing industry is like all normal primary resources they have normal productivity cycles. Lobsters happen to be on a 7-10 year cycle. Landings in most ports from Cape Sable Island to Digby have been very good. Some boats averaging over 10,000 lbs the first day! Let’s see the math 10,000 x 4.00 = $40K not bad for the first full day! Please don’t think this is an anomaly as most boats landed plus this and not just the first day. I know boats landing 7,000 lbs as of this past Tuesday (Dec-15). Plead poverty to the people that do not have a clue about what goes on. The population never said for you to buy $50k trucks, $1 million dollar boats that are finished inside better than most of your houses, new houses, cottages, vacations (sorry they do need 3-4 in the winter since they fish approximately 60 days on the water), atv’s, ski-doos, etc……. See the point get rid of the toys and act a bit more normally like the rest of the population.
Then the wives complain but alas most are on a payroll for doing nothing (enough weeks to collect top EI only). I’ve even seen babysitters on the boat payrolls for EI. Also a captain that makes $50k per year in about 60 days do not need a separate EI act so they can drawl employment insurance. I mean all they have to show is approximately $13,500 in earnings and can draw $454 a week in extra benefits that most of them think is theirs. They forget they place the rest of their earnings in a company and pay a tax rate of about 20%. Then they have the gaul to ask if I need anything repaired in the summer for cash. Get the hell outta here.
I see a lot of fishermen saving the lobsters this year. I see and hear they are saving about 50% of the catch. Well in this nice in climate weather I hope they all become popsicles and freeze and they lose everything. It’s nothing more than greed! I hope you all ask for a receipt and the fishermen remembering to report to good ol revenue Canada everything their selling on the road!!!! There should be no bail out, no government money put in, no anything! If it does not work then guess what it doesn’t work. There are no more new markets, if there were we would have already found them. Any government money pumped in for marketing is nothing more than a subsidy to the industry and a waste. Keep it, pay the national debt, and reduce taxes for all is a better way to help everyone!
PS
Still in the business and have to deal with these illiterate idiots on a daily basis. I can guarantee that I’m making my buck and if you’re not then time to move on and find something new to do. By the way buy beef, chicken, pork, hot dogs; better value than a crappy lobster that has no meat and all water. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
—Eric Comeau (Fish Buyer)
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2009.
tldr; lobster fishermen are scamming the system while playing victim.
Most of us knew this already.
We need to stop bailing these guys out. They live the good life, work a couple of months a year, and complain and collect EI the rest of the time. Get a JOB, like the rest of us. I am so sick of paying people to sit on their asses at home. I have spent alot of time in other countries. There are no beggars in alot of places, no EI. People will all work, they will even sell pencils, or single cigarettes to make their way. If they don’t make money, they don’t eat. It is simple.
Stop the handouts, stop the bailouts. Learn to be self sufficient people.
Amen OP!!!! I grew up in an area largely populated by lobster fisherman and they are just plain lazy. They work a couple of months of the year and do NOTHING the rest of the year. They all drive huge trucks/SUVs or fancy cars and flaunt it to everyone else. I can’t stand lobster myself, they are the cockroaches of the sea. So fuck the lobster fishermen and their bailouts!
I nominate this as the best bitch of 2009!!
Jesus, long enough? Listen, lobster fishing is a big investment and sometimes has very little payout. Any job that doesn’t have a steady paycheque is hard when markets change. Wouldn’t you rather see these guys working their hardest and selling lobster when they can rather than sitting on their asses doing nothing? Where else do you think these guys are going to work? Isn’t it better to see the government giving them a bit to help them out, rather than paying them to sit around because there are not enough jobs they’re qualified for?
Well said, OP.
I had a lobster fisherman try to sell me lobster and he said he has to sell a certain amount to the stores or he can’t collect EI; the rest he sells as cash and by inference doesn’t pay taxes on it. Do we really want people who are making far about average income both collecting EI and regularly committing tax invasion?
I once heard an economist say that if everyone reported all their income, our taxes with be 1/2 what they are, with all the same services.
Mmmmm, $5/lb lobster…
I had two rounds of lobster last year when it was cheap and now, if I even LOOK at another lobster I’ll toss my cookies.
My apartment smelled like lobster for a week afterwards too!
And my cats wouldn’t even eat the little bit I gave them as a treat! heh.
And to think when my grandfather fished, lobster was considered garbage food.
When my dad used to do meat cutting in the early 70s chicken wings were actually the parts of the chicken no one wanted!
Great bitch
However I see nothing in it explaining why a lobster sold to the processer for $4 bucks is selling at Sob…I mean Supe…I mean the local big box grocery chains for $8 + !?!?!?
you want to talk about who’s gouging who .
a mark up of over 100% is unbelievable…maybe in France, but 50 kilometers or less from the boats !
Its robbery around here without guns !
Which is why I’m buying mine from a truck just down the road for $5.00 ! ! !
~*~GREAT POST~*~
I too have seen first hand how these guys abuse the system…Jars of cash hidden at home so they don’t pay tax.
Selling offshore to the Japanese for cash$$$
But they want my tax dollars -Fuck you-
Lobster is garbage food…….to much work for what you get.
Since i’m bitching…WHY THE FUCK IS HALIBUT MORE EXPENSIVE HERE THAN IN ONTARIO????
tell that to the family that just lost their parent and husband. fishing is not an easy fucking job. i worked on a trawler once, and just let me fucking tell you this, your life is at stake every fucking minute you are out there. i don’t give a shit if can can swim like a fish or not, cold water really fucks you up when you are in it for awhile. and the upkeep for these boats aren’t cheap, all just so you can have a cheaper meal,that would normally cost you plenty fucking more, in a restaurant. these guys aren’t the lazy, beer swilling fuck offs you think they are, their hours are very long,and really fucking hard. even the fucking captain of the boat works, and usually longer and harder than the rest. so next time you eat a fucking lobster, crab, or even a fucking oyster, mussel, or any other shellfish, think how much life has been lost, getting that shit to you all.
oh, and mr comeau, why don’t you try going out for a few days yourself then, other than that, shut your stupid fucking mouth, you shit for brains asshole.
PK my dad used to buy bags of wings for next to nothing.
life sucks, my step dad was a lobster fisherman and he can attest to how difficult it was….
but for only 2 months, it had better be.
he’s in rough shape now, joints and bones, etc…
but there’s no fucking way a lobster is worth any more than $4 a pound.
and I grew up in a house right off a warf…
they’re all shady there (and so I would assume so everywhere else since I’ve lived near two).
flaunting it for 3-4 years when it was 8-9 a pound off the boat.
fuck that. It’s all the losers from my high school fucking around and partying every weekend. that’ll learn em.
Perfect timing, asshole.
BTW, everybody knows at least one person who knows someone that is a million dollar lobster fisherman.
Drive through some fishing villages sometime and tell me that EVERYONE is rich. Oh, right, its poor money management for the ones who aren’t. Right…
A-fucking-men! I second the nomination for best bitch of 2009. I have been crying this for years. I get so mad when I hear the poor lobster fisherman beg for more money on the news. Thank you, Eric for standing up and pointing out the reality.
uh, no it’s the others that aren’t lobster fishermen… those who shuck clams or cut for roe… they aren’t making the coin.
as for lobster… time to trade in that new avalanche for a used ford ranger there bud…
http://halifax.kijiji.ca/c-cars-vehicles-b…
After you finish financing your $130,000 boat, pay for your crew, and cover the cost of diesel and other supplies how much do you think you’ll have left over?
hmmm, poster says about 7000 lb a day ‘as of this past tuesday’ …
since that implies that that isn’t much, let’s assume that’s the median… and so an average.
7000 * 60 days * $5 lb = $2.1MM – gas – (I hope) income tax – boat payment… so say what half? 1 MM left…
half to crew (of 4) means each makes 125k, captain nets 500k.
spend 100k on bait and reparing traps/maintenance on boat in off season while collecting EI.
ballparks, but I tried to err higher rather than lower. If my figures are wrong, please let me know where but I’m not so sure they should be getting EI… throwing half in a nice GIC for a while would get the mortgage down there pretty quick and boat would be paid off pretty fast.
Last year my cousin pulled his boat up after the first week as the traps were coming up empty, he didn’t pull in enough to cover diesel.
crany, i know all kinds of guys that had to do just that. i have never tried the lobster route, and don’t intend to start.hell, i had an old 67 cape boat years back,just a 6 cyl. job. and just for a weekend, it was expensive, just putting around the islands and shit off lunenburg. was only used as pleasure, after i fitted it with 4 bunks and a head. that alone set me back over 4 grand. these boats aren’t cheap to run people, and the insurance is higher than a vehicle on the road. think polution, bilge, and anything else that can come from one, including sinking.
Cranky, it’s due to overfishing, tell your Cuz to get another job. There are too many hands in that bucket.
Everybody who knows someone on EI should encourage them to get off their asses and get a viable job.
VIABLE.
If not for you, I’m all for fishermen finding viable jobs… but what about those guys that have been doing it for their whole lives? What do you expect them to do, get retrained for another job, when no one will hire them because they don’t want to hire people close to retirement? There are people who abuse the system in many different areas – I know lots of guys who work landscaping in the summer and collect EI all winter. They make OK money too, and unless the earth seriously warms up, they’re not going to be doing a lot of landscaping in the winter anytime soon.
Exactly, Bro Tim. He tells us this every time we go out for wings “we used to sell these for 25 cents a bag ffs!”
haha.
Guess my dad was 40 years ahead of his time. As for lobster, it’s the mark up between the fisherman and the client that puts it out of reach. The fisherman may sell a one pund lobster for say $3-5/lb. By the time it hits a retail store it’s $8-9+/lb and to get it in a restaurant, you’re looking at $15-30+. So who really is making the money here?
infy, how come you are on here at this post, using the word asses, and in a newer post, you say you are offended by vulger language, what the fuck is it, yes or no.