Dear Sir:
I am sorry to say your lobsters opened so poor that I would not care to buy them. One can in three, which I opened here was Black. I am afraid you will have trouble with them. Better have them labelled with a nice label and ship them to the States.

The circumstances of the fishery are changing year by year. It is now no longer a question of regulating a legitimate occupation, but of dealing with a ruined industry.

he lobster industry faced two crises in its early years. The first was quality control. Standards varied from cannery to cannery. Some sometimes shipped product that should have been thrown out. A succession of Reports and Commissions warned that low quality standards might be the death of the industry. Gradually, as canning techniques became better understood and canners became aware that quality counted as much or more than quantity, the industry salvaged its reputation.

The second crisis was harder to solve. Fifteen years of booming markets and growing catches had strained stocks to the breaking point. At first the industry kept on its feet by going after the smaller lobsters that just a few years before it couldn't even be bothered to land. When these began to run out there were only two choices left - regulation or ruin.