Lobster Prices in Nova Scotia: What Drives the Price per Pound

Lobster prices in Nova Scotia start at the wharf. The “shore price” is what buyers pay harvesters per pound, and every retail price in the province is built on top of it. In southwest Nova Scotia’s big winter fishery, the shore price opened the 2025-26 season at about $8.25 to $8.50 a pound and reached $12.50 by late January 2026. Two years earlier it had touched a record $20 in March 2024. The swings come from a handful of forces you can learn to read: seasonal supply, export demand, trade disputes, the exchange rate and lobster size.

This guide explains each one, so the number on the board at your fish counter makes sense. If you’re buying for dinner tonight, our pillar guide on how to buy live lobster in Nova Scotia covers where to go and what to look for. For the bigger picture of the fishery itself, start with Nova Scotia lobster: the complete guide.

Shore price vs retail price: what’s the difference?

The shore price (also called the boat or wharf price) is paid to the harvester when the catch is landed. Buyers then grade the lobster by size and shell quality, hold it in pounds or tanks, and sell it on to exporters, processors, restaurants and stores. Each step adds cost and risk, because lobsters die in storage and some won’t make the grade for the live trade.

One recent snapshot shows the gap. In December 2025, CTV News reported that shore prices near Eastern Passage, just outside Dartmouth, were sitting around $8.50 a pound, and that the resale price was roughly $11 at a local shop selling live and cooked lobster. That’s about $2.50 a pound between the boat and the customer, at a time when prices were unusually low. Expect the gap to differ from shop to shop and to widen for cooked lobster, which has more labour in it.

Price	Who pays it	What it covers
Shore (wharf) price	Buyers paying harvesters	The lobster as landed, ungraded
Wholesale / export price	Restaurants, processors, foreign importers	Grading, holding, packing, plus freight on top
Retail price	You, at a market or supermarket	All of the above plus store costs, losses and margin

Why do lobster prices in Nova Scotia swing so much?

Supply follows the fishing calendar

Nova Scotia doesn’t have one lobster season. It has many, set by Lobster Fishing Area (LFA). The province’s biggest fishery, LFAs 33 and 34 in southwest Nova Scotia, opens in late November (on November 24 in 2025) and closes on May 31. Many other areas fish in spring and early summer. Our guide to the Nova Scotia lobster season lists every area’s dates.

That calendar shapes prices. Atlantic Fisherman reported in April 2024 that wharf prices in LFAs 33 and 34 “usually peak during February and March, when fishing effort and landings are the lowest” of the six-month season, and that the price traditionally drops once spring areas open across Atlantic Canada. That’s exactly what happened in 2024: the shore price hit a record $20 a pound in late March, and Kris Vascotto of the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance told the paper he expected “a very dramatic correction in very short order” once other areas opened.

Spring brings its own dip. In May 2025, The Canadian Press reported that prices “typically dip in May as the spring lobster season swings into high gear.” That year the wharf price fell from about $15 a pound as southwest Nova Scotia wound down in April to $8 along the province’s Atlantic shore, and as low as $6.50 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Newfoundland.

Weather and water temperature

Winter storms keep boats tied up, and cold water can hold catches down: in spring 2025, catches were smaller than hoped “mainly because of cold ocean temperatures,” according to The Canadian Press. In January 2026, Dan Fleck of the Brazil Rock 33/34 Lobster Association told The Navigator that his fleet had seen only one completely calm fishing day so far that season, and that some fishers had already landed their gear until spring. Fewer lobsters on the wharf means more competition among buyers.

Shell quality and size

Not every lobster earns the same price. The live trade wants firm, well-filled lobsters that survive a long flight, while recently moulted ones fill out over the following weeks (see hard-shell vs soft-shell lobster). In early 2026, Geoff Irvine of the Lobster Council of Canada said “an expected poor quality due to moult recovery” had made buyers cautious at the start of the season, and later pointed to “a lack of good quality lobster for air shipment.” By January he also reported “a shortage of large lobster which has pushed up prices for selects and up.” Size grades from canners to jumbos each have their own market, which our guide to lobster sizes and grades explains.

Dumping Day opening prices: a recent track record

The opening price in LFAs 33 and 34, set when the season starts in late November, is the most-watched lobster number in the province. Here’s how recent seasons played out, with the source for each figure:

Season (LFAs 33/34)	Opening shore price	What happened next	Source
2023-24	not confirmed	Record $20/lb in late March 2024	Atlantic Fisherman, Apr. 4, 2024
2024-25	about $11.50/lb, described as a record opening	About $15/lb as the season wound down in April 2025	Atlantic Fisherman, Jan. 15, 2026; CBC/CP, May 15, 2025
2025-26	$8.25–$8.50/lb (opened Nov. 24, 2025)	Unchanged through December, then $12.50 by late January 2026	Atlantic Fisherman, Jan. 15, 2026; The Navigator, Feb. 6, 2026

The 2025-26 opening was about 30 per cent below the previous year, according to Atlantic Fisherman, and the price “hasn’t moved since the first of the season,” as Lockeport buyer Mike Cotter put it at the end of December. Irvine said it was the first year anyone could remember shore prices in Southwestern Nova Scotia not moving for the first 30 days. The 2026-27 opening price won’t be known until the season starts, so treat any figure you see before then as a forecast.

How exports and trade set the price per pound

Most Nova Scotia lobster leaves the country. That’s why a tariff announced in Beijing or Washington can move the price on a wharf in Yarmouth County within days.

China. On March 10, 2025, China announced a 25 per cent retaliatory tariff on Canadian seafood, which The Canadian Press noted rose to 41 per cent once a value-added tax was included. Vascotto estimated that Canada sends roughly 40 per cent of its live lobster to the United States and another 40 per cent to China. By the end of 2025, Cotter said his shipping to China was down 75 per cent from the year before, and Vascotto said the drop in the opening price “almost equates to the 25 per cent tariff.” In January 2026, China agreed to temporarily suspend the tariff on Canadian lobster and crab, and Vascotto said the deal could lead to higher wharf prices. He also flagged that the suspension appeared to run only to the end of 2026, so watch this one.

The calendar of demand. Exporters try to hold lobster for big holidays, including Lunar New Year. In 2026 it fell on February 17, which Irvine called the latest on record, and that delay kept buyers cautious early in the season.

Competing supply. Maine fishes the same species. Vascotto told Atlantic Fisherman that unusually high Maine landings in November and December 2025 put lobster from both sides of the border on the market at once, which pushed prices down.

The Canadian dollar. The United States is the biggest single market for Canadian lobster, so the exchange rate matters. Back in 2013, Irvine told a House of Commons committee that “the shore prices basically go in lockstep with the dollar change” (committee record). Other factors have grown since then, especially tariffs and Asian demand, but a weaker loonie still tends to support wharf prices and a stronger one tends to squeeze them.

Why is lobster so expensive?

Put the pieces together and the answer is less mysterious:

1. It’s a global commodity. Restaurants in Boston, Shanghai and Seoul are bidding for the same lobsters you are. In 2024, Nova Scotia’s lobster landings were worth $961.9 million at the wharf, according to DFO’s landed value tables.
2. Supply is seasonal and weather-bound. When southwest Nova Scotia is the main area fishing in deep winter, a stormy month can empty the tanks.
3. It has to arrive alive. Live lobster needs cold storage, careful handling and fast air freight, and the export trade depends on lobster good enough to survive the trip.
4. Harvesters need volume to cover costs. “The $8 per pound might sound like a workable price but when you factor in the low volume, it doesn’t work,” Bernie Berry of the Coldwater Lobster Association said in May 2025. At the other extreme, Vascotto warned in March 2024 that overseas buyers were threatening to take lobster off menus because of the price.

What’s the best time to buy lobster in Nova Scotia?

Retail prices are built on the shore price, so buy when supply is high:

• Late spring (May into June) is usually the best value. Most of Nova Scotia’s spring areas are fishing, landings climb, and prices have typically dipped, as they did in May 2025.
• Early in the southwest season can be good, but not always. The 2025-26 season opened low and stayed low through Christmas 2025, a good year for holiday buyers. In other years the opening price has been high, as it was in 2024-25.
• February and March are usually the priciest. Landings in LFAs 33 and 34 are lowest, and that’s when the 2024 record was set.
• Ask about size. When large lobsters are scarce, as Irvine reported in January 2026, chicks and quarters can be the better buy per pound.

Wherever you shop, check that the price is per pound live weight. Then use our guide on how to store live lobster so nothing you paid for goes to waste. More buying advice is collected in our buying and storing hub.

A note on the numbers

Shore prices change weekly and differ between areas, so every price in this article is tied to a date and a published report. None of them is a quote for today. For the current wharf price, ask a local buyer or harvester association. For what you’ll pay in a shop, call ahead, because many sellers post prices daily.