Economic diversity of Maine's American lobster fishery

Abstract

Maine’s coastal communities critically depend on the American Lobster fishery, which is now exposed to ocean warming. There is uncertainty about the future robustness of the stock and the economic performance of the fleet appears vulnerable. This research characterizes economic heterogeneity in Maine’s fishing fleet using latent class stochastic profit frontier analysis. We explore the diversity of business models and examine how they were associated with the economic performance of the fleet in the pre-warming period. The study uses unique firm-level data that captures the operational and economic information of the harvesters in the year 2010, the year before the reported environmental change in the Gulf of Maine. Our findings indicate economic efficiencies differed based on their choice of business models and found technical upgrades generally contributed to improved economic performance in the pre-warming period. Reported societal benefits associated with employment levels have characterized the lobster production environment over firm-level efficiency. This research establishes a critically important baseline for future comparison and quantification of policy reforms within the U.S. lobster fishery.