Time to start buying lobster

Looking for an inexpensive change-up for your next backyard barbeque? Try lobster. "Per pound, it's less expensive than hot dogs right now," grumbles lobster-boat captain Mike Dassatt, who fishes the coast near Belfast, Maine, with his wife Sheila

The wholesale or "boat" price of lobsters has crashed from a peak price of about $10 a pound in the winter of 2006 -- average prices in recent years have hovered around $4.50 a pound -- to a mere $2.25 today. "We're basically off the charts historically in terms of low prices for this time of year," says John Sackton, a Lexington, Mass.-based seafood industry consultant. (While retail prices vary widely by location, stores in New England have been running specials on live lobster for as little as $5 or $6 per pound.)

"Lobsters are a happy food -- something you have for your anniversary or to show off to your girlfriend -- and it's been promoted that way forever," says Albert Carver, who owns five lobster pounds on northern Maine's Beals Island. (A lobster pound is a fenced-off cove used to store caught lobsters in their natural habitat.)

"Nobody goes to the supermarket with lobster on their list," Carver says. "Steak could be $8 a pound, and they're still going to buy it because it's on their list." The way to get lobster on the shopping list, he says, is by moving lobster down market -- from the lobster tank to the frozen food aisle -- and making cheaper, frozen lobster as widely available as frozen shrimp or salmon. "If we're going to win the market back," he says, "it's going to have to happen with price."