I’ve recently got into watching the Lobstermen series on Discovery Channel catch-up, and I am completely hooked. I did wonder though; how much money do lobstermen make in a year or hour? I did some research, and here’s what I found out:
Lobstermen can make anywhere between $24,130 and $58,470 US dollars a year in salary. The average wage for a lobsterman was estimated to be $48,000 in 2013. Apprentices will need to complete a boat safety course and 200 days of experience before being given a license to operate.
How much do lobster fishermen make an hour?
There is no publicly available data for hourly wage rates for lobster fishermen, so I had to make a similar comparison with what numbers I could find online in related industries.
The best comparison I could find was the hourly wage of a deep-sea fisherman. If we use that as a guide, we can assume that:
Lobstermen can make $20.39 per hour lobster fishing based on an annual salary of $42,410. However, this figure could be somewhat skewed given the seasonality, and hours spent on a lobster fishing boat with each trip.
Lobstermen annual salary compared state to state
I also decided to see if there was any variation in lobstermen salaries between the US states. It was interesting to see that the annual wages can change depending on where you catch lobster:
- Alaska – lobstermen can make $33,000 a year.
- California – lobstermen can make $47,000 a year.
- Florida – lobstermen can make $40,000 a year.
- Georgia – lobstermen can make $46,000 a year.
- Maine – lobstermen can make $43,000 a year.
- Massachusetts – lobstermen can make $58,000 a year.
- Mississippi – lobstermen can make $37,000 a year.
There are some very good reasons for these fluctuations in wages.
For example, if you’re based in California you won’t get affected by the same extreme weather that might impact the annual earnings of a Florida lobsterman.
Another factor on how much a lobsterman will get paid per hour or annually is the local licensing laws.
Regulations on lobster catching will be different from state to state including restrictions on some of the following aspects:
- How many lobster fishing licenses the state will issue.
- How many lobsters a fishing crew is permitted to catch daily and annually.
- What size of lobster will be permitted to be legally fished and caught.
Depending on the legalities in the state, it could impact how much a lobster fisherman could earn on an annual basis.
Hourly wages and annual salaries aren’t the whole story
Whilst the annual salary of a lobster fisherman might look quite appealing, there are other aspects which can eat into the wages.
When you put all the fishing gear, fuel, insurance, crew wages, licenses, and technology together, it adds up to some hefty costs to offset against earnings.
For example, I found a 2011 interview with a lobster boat captain on the Business Insider website who was talking about his earnings and money made.
He was quoted as saying:
“We’re struggling. If I come in with 600 pounds of lobster, people will see that I made $1,000 for that day. But they don’t see that I just replaced the engine for $30,000 or that I paid over $300 dollars for bait.”
How do I become a lobster fisherman?
If you like the sound of those annual wages and think you would like a piece of the action, then unfortunately you could be in for a hard time, not to mention a very long wait before you can start earning money.
The lobster fishing industry is notoriously hard to get into with long waiting lists and plenty of hoops to jump through, particularly for adults wanting to start this type of career.
Becoming a lobster fisherman is much easier for teenagers, as they will first need to undertake a 2-year apprenticeship, but this needs to be completed before they are 18 years old.
During this training program, the youngster will need to go lobster fishing with a licensed professional for at least 1,000 hours and 200 days and pass a boating safety course.
Once the apprenticeship is complete, the teenager will then automatically qualify for a fishing license.
The hard work that goes into what a lobster fisherman can make each year will eventually lead to the food on your plate.
For people older than 18, the regulations are stacked against them. They still need to complete an apprenticeship course, but then have a waiting game of sometimes up to 15 years.
The reason the waiting list is so long is because the adult apprentice will need to wait for lobster trap permits to expire, or for existing lobstermen to give up their own licenses.
And that doesn’t happen too often when you consider how long lobster fishermen will continue to fish. For example, I found this interesting fact on the Internet about the demographics in the lobster fishing industry:
“The average age of Maine lobstermen is 50 years old. But more telling is the number of lobstermen age 50 or older. A quick survey of the Department of Marine Resources 2014 list of licensed lobstermen in the state reveals that of the 6,012 lobstermen (including student and apprentice license holders), 2,682 are over the age of 50, nearly one half. One hundred and fifty-two of those lobstermen are 80 years old or more.”
The above quote was found on the Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance website.
How the lobster fishing market is set to change
Another reason why you might want to reconsider this as a career option is predicted market changes; the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (visit website) released a study predicting job opportunities in this sector are going to decline by 5% by 2022.
The reasons slated for this decline in employment figures was the impact of government regulation aimed at replenishing fishing stocks. They aim to do this by reducing the amount of lobster fishermen will be permitted to catch.
This is bound to limit job opportunities in the market and will have an impact on annual lobster fishing salaries.
Another factor that could contribute to a decline in job opportunities will be the advances in technology. You don’t need as many men on board a boat as you used to in order to run an efficient lobster fishing operation.
The last word…
Lobster fishermen have a very dangerous job, requiring stamina, skill, and resilience. They fish in some very harsh sea and weather conditions to set the lobster traps and are at risk of injury on a daily basis.
It’s certainly not a job I would ever like to do, but I admire and respect the men who undertake this work, and believe they are worth every cent that they get paid an hour or year.
So, that’s how much do lobstermen make a year, but what about some of the other professions that have recently been highlighted in reality TV fishing series? I’ve also compiled data on the following high-risk fishing jobs:
