Maine lobstermen once held more than 7,000 commercial licenses, but now about half many actively fish for Maine’s most valuable catch.
The decline has occurred since the late 1990s as Maine’s commercial fishing industry, which is dominated by lobstermen, faces increasing challenges in the form of climate change, increased regulation and competition for space in the Gulf of Maine.
While the drop has been gradual, its effects could be far-reaching, given lobstermen’s central role in Maine’s coastal economy and their political might in both Augusta and Washington D.C.
On the local level, declining numbers of lobstermen could take away a key economic support for Maine towns and businesses that rely on the fishery.
The trend could also potentially weaken the sway of lobstermen in larger debates over the future of the Gulf of Maine, including what protections should be extended to endangered whales that can get tangled in fishing gear, and how much of the gulf should be reserved for other industries that lobstermen see as threats, including offshore wind and aquaculture.
However, even as the industry shrinks, it has still proven itself capable of winning high-stakes political battles.
Why the decline
In interviews, lobstermen have pointed to outside regulations as part of the reason that their numbers are shrinking. But recent economic trends have played just as much or even more of a role, according to some of them.
Carroll Staples, who lives in Bar Harbor and fishes out of Bass Harbor on Mount Desert Island, described the significant gear mandates that federal regulators have imposed to protect endangered whales as “a pain in the butt”
But he also noted that volatility in the lobster market over the past 15 or so years has discouraged people from staying in or getting into the fishery.
Staples, 46, grew up in a Swans Island fishing family and entered the trade himself when he was 14. At the time, there were fewer options for work and the fishery was fairly stable, he said. But since the late 2000s, the price paid for their catch has bounced around unpredictably while expenses such as bait and fuel have stayed fairly high.
“It didn’t cost that much to go. The price was climbing more each year, but now it’s kind of the opposite of that,” he said, pumping diesel into his boat Goose while tied up at Thurston’s wholesale fishing pier in the village of Bernard.
He added that reliable crew members have become hard to find, and that nothing he invests in — boat or gear — appreciates in value the way another business might.
Staples has encouraged his 17-year-old son — who sometimes fishes with him — to be less dependent on the business than he is. If Cole wants to fish just in the summer months, when it requires less investment, Carroll said he’d be fine with it, but he doesn’t think his son should try to fish year-round.
“Anybody with any sense is going to take a look at this business and think it’s not a great business model,” Staples said. “It doesn’t surprise me that more people aren’t getting into it.”
The numbers
Since 1997 — the earliest year for which state data is available — the number of licensed commercial lobstermen in Maine has dropped by 27 percent, from 7,100 that year to fewer than 5,200 in 2024, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
But the actual number of people out on the water fishing is even smaller. Since 2008, DMR has also tracked the number of licensed lobstermen who are active each year — based on mandated reports by dealers — and that number has fallen from 4,506 in 2016 to 3,667 last year, or by more than 18 percent.
While it’s unclear how closely they’re related, those declines have coincided with a drop in the overall amount of lobster that’s being commercially caught in Maine.
Over the last nine years, the amount of lobster brought ashore each year has dropped by 35 percent, from an all-time peak of 132 million pounds to 86 million pounds in 2024, the lowest statewide haul in 15 years.
But the overall revenue from those landings has fluctuated wildly, from $342 million in 2012 to $742 million in 2021, back below $400 million in 2022 and then rising to $528 million in 2024. The average price paid to lobstermen has also swung, from as low as $2.69 per pound in 2012 — when fishermen threats of industry tie-ups led to stern warnings about price-fixing from regulators — to $6.71 per pound in 2021.
Impacts on communities and politics
Those numbers have far-ranging implications for towns along the coast as well as regulators and elected officials determining how to manage the Gulf of Maine.
Linda Nelson, economic development director for Stonington — the state’s most lucrative fishing port — said town officials have been aware for a while that the number of active fishermen and overall lobster landings are decreasing.
“We’ve seen this coming,” she said. “We’re not happy about it.”
Nelson said the annual value of the lobster that has been brought ashore locally in recent years is significant — ranging from $55 million to $70 million — and that any long-term decrease would hurt the town. Already the cost of real estate in Stonington — with slightly more than 1,000 legal residents — and neighboring Deer Isle have pushed fishermen to live off-island where housing is cheaper, she said.
Besides the volatility of lobster prices and the high cost of running their business along Maine’s increasingly pricey coast, fishermen have faced various other external challenges in recent years.
That has included the possibility of widespread retaliatory tariffs from the Trump administration’s trade war and warming waters in the Gulf of Maine, which may be pushing lobster into cooler waters and are increasing the threat of powerful storms such as those that did millions of dollars worth of damage to working waterfronts in January of 2024.
Aquaculture lease sites have become more common along the coast, prompting complaints from some lobstermen about access and water quality. More controversially, the wellbeing of endangered whales and the spectre of offshore wind development have cast doubt on the fishery’s continued economic dominance.
But while there are clear stakes for communities such as Stonington that depend on the lobster industry, it’s less obvious how the dropping number of fishermen could affect the industry’s political might. Even as their numbers have fallen, lobstermen have still managed to claim some key victories on those fronts in recent years.
In recognition of the industry’s $1 billion-plus impact on the state economy, Maine politicians of all stripes — from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans — have made a point of siding with lobstermen on certain gear mandates, recently helping to delay until 2028 one set of restrictions meant to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
In Maine, lobstermen were also a key constituency that helped to elect Trump, who has pledged to deregulate fishing and put a damper on the nascent offshore wind industry.
And just last week, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted to repeal controversial changes to minimum catch size limits for Maine lobster, a reversal that state regulators celebrated largely attributed to pushback from the industry.
License wait lists
Patrice McCarron, president of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said that even before the economic disruptions of the past dozen years, the decrease in licensed lobstermen is something that has been planned along some sections of the coast.
Maine’s coastal waters are divided into seven zones where councils set rules for how many fishing licenses are issued. In some zones that felt crowded, councils set ratios decades ago for how many lobstermen have to retire or move away before a new licensed fisherman is allowed in, which has helped to reduce the numbers.
The number of fishermen retiring altogether has accelerated recently, in part because some are at the age where they want to while others feel discouraged by increasing regulation on the fleet, McCarron said. The broader implications of the reduction of the fleet are still unknown, but she said it’s still important to keep fishery accessible to those who want to pursue it.
In another indication of declining interest, the number of would-be lobstermen waiting to get licenses dropped by at least half from 2020 to 2025 in each zone except one, according to DMR.
Studies have linked the decreased interest and overall decline in active licenses, in part, to falling enthusiasm for the industry among younger people, according to DMR spokesperson Jeff Nichols. While the state continues to support programs aimed at sustaining the fishery over the long-term, it has also sought to boost other fisheries such as menhaden or scallops, as well as the aquaculture industry, he said.
At the same time, in addition to the zone wait lists, the department continues to maintain active student and apprentice licensing programs in order to provide newcomers with opportunities to become commercial lobstermen.
New blood
Tyler Lunt, 19, of Bass Harbor, could be considered one of the fishery’s newer faces, even though he’s been involved in the business for years.
Lunt, part of the 11th-generation of his family to fish around Frenchboro, said he has a student license and has worked his way up to a 500-trap limit. He sometimes fishes with his father, Nate Lunt, but does so primarily for himself in the summer and as a crewman on someone else’s boat in the winter, he said.
Lunt acknowledged that a big reason for the drop in interest may be generational, though he said increasing regulation is also a factor.
When he was 14, the anticipated wait time to rise to the top of the local zone list for a regular commercial license was 27 years, he said. But when his uncle put his name on the same list in 2023, the anticipated wait time had shrunk to two years.
“I think the older generation were the ones keeping everything afloat, but the older they get the more it’s a toll on their body,” Lunt said. “I think a lot of the older generation is kind of done with it, and a whole lot of this new generation does not want to go fishing, it seems, at all.”
The uncertainty over how lobster income might vary from one year to the next — or even by day — is another factor, Lunt said. Just recently, the prevailing per-pound price offered by area dealers dropped $4 in one day, he said. Price drops in the spring, when more fishermen start hauling traps, are not uncommon, he said, but he’s never seen it drop that much in 24 hours.
“It’s been kind of rocky the past couple of years,” Lunt said. “People see it as ‘I’m going to go work my tail off to go and get basically screwed by the dock every day.’ It’s a game that goes back and forth the whole season.”