Lobster Fishermen Protests Unlikely This Year, Officials Say

Maine government officials are not expecting a repeat of last summer's protests and blockades by lobster fishermen in New Brunswick.

Fishermen in the province were upset about local fish processing plants paying rock-bottom prices for a glut of soft shell American lobster. They worried there would be no market for their catches when the season opened on the Northumberland Strait.

But Patrick Keliher, the commissioner for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, says "that was a perfect storm."

"It was driven by warm water in the Gulf of Maine where our shed came four weeks early and we had about five million pounds of lobsters in four weeks that came at a time when the Canadian processors, especially in New Brunswick, weren't ready," said Keliher.

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