Gas Prices Might Be Up, But Lobster Prices are Down!

The Great Lobster Mystery from Slate

Money quotes:

In a seafood store in downtown Portland, a pound of lobster ($5.49) went for pretty close to what I had paid for a gallon of gas in Connecticut the day before ($4.30). A few years ago, the pound-of-lobster-to-gallon-of-gas ratio would have more like 4-to-1.

Finally, lobsters remain cheap in Maine because of their simplicity. Raising them isn't a particularly energy-intensive business. Lobstermen have to gas up their boats, but they don't have to pay for fertilizer or feed. On the coast of Maine, lobsters are simply removed from their traps and put into tanks at dockside restaurants or sold directly to home cooks, so there are precious few distribution, processing, or packaging costs to pass on. The only ancillary costs associated with getting lobsters from the dock to the table are 1) butter and 2) the statins that subsisting on a diet of rich lobster meat dipped in butter will require many consumers to take.