Lobster fishing area (LFA) 35 along the Nova Scotia coastline leads the way for fall commercial lobster seasons opening in the Bay of Fundy and southwestern Nova Scotia.
The LFA 35 season is scheduled to open on Oct. 14 for the 93 licence holders. Fishermen are hopeful for a good fall.
“Last season landings were down a little bit from the previous year,” said LFA 35 fisherman Chris Hersey.
The shore price last fall was also down from the year before, added Hersey, and the weather was “quite windy.”
The LFA fall season opened with a shore price in the $10 to $10.50/pound range in 2025, and $11 to $12 in 2024.
The fishing season is split in LFA 35, closing on Dec. 31, then re-opening the last day in February until July 31.
Winds were a factor early in the 2026 spring fishery, giving way to better weather in the summer, said Hersey.
“There were lots of small ones and lots of seed lobsters” in the spring catch, said Hersey. “It seems like the shed (moult) was a week or so later in the spring, later than in other years.”
Price-wise, the spring started out with a high of $10, dropping to the $8 range in June and July.
Hersey said LFA 35 fishermen tend to use redfish for bait and have no trouble getting it.
The North Atlantic right whale is not a concern going into the season for LFA 35. “We haven’t seen any up this far. It’s never been an issue yet,” said Hersey.
According to the latest DFO statistics available, 2,461 MT of lobster were landed in LFA 35 during the 2023/24 season, with a landed value of $49 million. For the 2022/23 season, landings came in at 2,576 MT, valued at $43 million. In 2021/22, landings totalled 2,394 MT, with a landed value of $54 million. In 2020/21, 2,513 MT of lobster valued at $51 million were caught in LFA 35. No statistics were available for the 2024/25 season.
LFAs 36, 37 and 38 on the New Brunswick side of the Bay of Fundy are scheduled to open Nov. 10 (second Tuesday in November) while Canada’s largest lobster fishery, LFAs 33 and 34, is scheduled to open Nov. 30.
According to preliminary statistics from DFO, for the 2024/2025 commercial lobster season in LFA 33, 7,179 metric tonnes (MT) of lobster were landed, valued at $175 million. In LFA 34, 14,742 MT of lobster were caught, with a landed value of $349 million.
In 2024, the total landed value for all lobster fisheries in Nova Scotia was $961.9 M.
