The hidden cost of cheap lobster

The Atlantic has posted an interesting story on how the collapse of Iceland's financial led to dramatically lower prices for fresh lobster. In brief, the post observes that Canadian factories processing lobsters as frozen food for restaurants & grocery stores had their financing heavily wrapped up in Iceland banks; when Iceland's economy collapsed, the processing plants went down with them, leading to an abundance of fresh lobster that in turn drove down the price.

Intrigued, I started looking into this issue more in depth, and along the way I found this news article from Maine that adds, among other things, an equally grim account of how the related collapse of lobster processing plants in Iceland had an equally disastrous effect. I say disastrous, because the seemingly benign democratization of fresh lobster has devastated the lobster fishing industry in New England and Canada--and with that, the communities were lobster fishing & sales is the bedrock of the local economy.

Which brings us to the poignant social enterprise anecdotes that turned my afternoon's academic writing into a period of reflection on the profound pain behind so much of what we do. Last October, the town of Stonington, Maine had a successful lobster bake where people could buy whole lobsters at the bargain price of $3.50 apiece. The aim of the "Eat a Lobster, Save the Community" fundraiser? To raise money to help the local lobster fleet pay for fuel.

This is the point where I usually draw an Aesopian moral about the artificiality of distinguishing between social enterprise and other ventures that have helped communities centuries before we came along. However valid the point may be, I don't have the heart to write about abstractions at length. My mind keeps drifting back to the image of people in need, selling what many still consider to be a luxury food at a rock-bottom price in the desperate hope of keeping the community alive.