US Lobster Declines as Chinese Crayfish Booms: The AI Advantage

It is overcast in Shanghai today, 8 degrees Celsius, with a hazy view outside the window. I came across an AP news report—Maine’s lobster catch plummeted to 78.8 million pounds in 2025, the lowest since 2008. Then I casually looked up the data for Chinese crayfish and was stunned.

3.45 Million Tons: Do You Know What This Means?

Let me clarify this number first. In 2024, China’s crayfish aquaculture area was 30.5 million mu, yielding 3.4476 million tons. Converted, that is roughly 7.6 billion pounds.

In the same year, the total US lobster catch—including the scattered catches outside of Maine—was around 80-plus million pounds.

7.6 billion vs. 80 million. The yield of Chinese crayfish is nearly 95 times that of US lobsters.

I know some might argue that these are two different species: crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) and the American lobster cannot be directly compared. True, the unit price differs significantly; a Maine lobster easily costs tens of dollars, while crayfish are sold by the pound for a dozen RMB. But my point isn’t about which is more expensive, rather a deeper issue: One industry relies on the whims of nature, while the other relies on technology. What will happen in a decade?

The answer is already right in front of us.

The price curves of different sizes of shrimp in this chart actually reflect a comprehensive supply regulation capability

450 Billion vs. 3.3 Billion: Two Completely Different Accounts

The total ex-vessel value of the Maine lobster industry in 2025 was $461 million, roughly 3.3 billion RMB. This is considered a good year because, despite the drop in catch volume, the average price increased somewhat.

The comprehensive output value of the entire Chinese crayfish industry chain? Official data from 2022 was 458 billion RMB. Even with fluctuations in recent years, conservative estimates put it well above 450 billion.

3.3 billion versus 450 billion. A 136-fold difference.

This is just the gap in volume and money. The more critical aspect is the structure.

The Maine lobster supply chain is very short: fishermen catch them at sea → return to the dock → sell to dealers → serve on the dining table. That’s basically it. Processing? Not much. Deep processing? Almost none. When Americans eat Boston lobster, the emphasis is on “fresh and alive,” so the entire chain is heavily dependent on the catching phase.

What about Chinese crayfish? I checked the data, and just in the processing sector alone—in 2024, the national crayfish processing volume was 1.3837 million tons, accounting for 40% of the aquaculture yield. Processed products range from quick-frozen shrimp tails and peeled meat to pre-made meals (spicy, garlic, thirteen-spice—take your pick), as well as casual snacks, chitin extraction, and astaxanthin health supplements. In Qianjiang, a prefecture-level city in Hubei, the deep processing output value of crayfish in 2024 approached 15 billion RMB, and a single company, Huashan Technology, produces 5 billion chitin capsules annually. A crayfish is consumed from head to shell, from the dining table to the pharmacy.

I chatted with a friend in the aquatic supply chain, and something he said left a deep impression on me: “The US lobster industry is a fishery story, whereas the Chinese crayfish industry is a manufacturing story.” What does manufacturing mean? It means standardization, scale, replicability, and controllability.

Let’s look at the timeline. Chinese crayfish aquaculture yield was 830,000 tons in 2016 and 3.45 million tons in 2024. It more than quadrupled in 8 years, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 20%. Meanwhile, the US Maine lobster? It was 110 million pounds (about 50,000 tons) in 2021, and fell to 78.8 million pounds (about 35,700 tons) in 2025, declining for 4 consecutive years.

One is climbing, the other is sliding. Direction is more important than position.

The People and Technologies You Ignored

Why is the Maine lobster catch shrinking year after year? The AP report is very blunt: warming oceans. Lobsters are cold-water creatures, highly sensitive to temperature. The lobster fisheries in southern New England have been declared “depleted” by regulators for years—as water temperatures rose in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts, lobsters migrated north into Canadian waters. Scientists warn that the same scenario is playing out in Maine.

Coupled with inflation driving up the costs of fuel, bait, and gear, Maine saw 21,000 fewer fishing trips in 2025 compared to the previous year. Tariff policies have also made the export market unpredictable. The entire industry is being squeezed by climate, costs, and policies.

Meanwhile, what is China doing?

First, AI has entered the ponds. A 2025 industry survey showed that some aquaculture enterprises are already using IoT sensors to monitor water quality in real-time—dissolved oxygen, pH levels, water temperature, and trace elements are all uploaded to a management platform, allowing AI to regulate them automatically. Underwater cameras monitor the activity of the shrimp, while drones patrol the ponds and dispense feed. I recently saw a case in Qianjiang: a fully automated AI shrimp tail peeling machine uses an AI visual recognition system to accurately distinguish shrimp meat from shells, completing the sorting with a twist of a bionic hand. One machine replaces 18 workers, cutting comprehensive labor costs by 90% and achieving a 98% yield rate. This machine was developed by Ruifeng Intelligent Control, founded by Qianjiang native Liu Min, and is expected to go into production this April.

Second, the “Crayfish in All Four Seasons” breakthrough. Traditionally, crayfish is a summer dish; in winter, they burrow and hibernate, leaving a market gap. However, Qianjiang collaborated with the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Huazhong Agricultural University to develop a “co-pond separation of breeding and rearing” technology. By dividing ponds into breeding and rearing zones, controlling density, disrupting hibernation behavior, and supplementing with fermented feed and precise minerals, they can now harvest crayfish in winter as well. In 2025, Qianjiang’s winter crayfish production exceeded 26,000 tons. This isn’t lab data; these are real crayfish caught and sold for cold, hard cash.

Third, from Heilongjiang to Hainan, a coordinated national game. The main producing regions (Hubei, Anhui, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi) harvest in spring and summer, Hainan and Guangxi harvest in winter, Heilongjiang harvests large-sized crayfish in late summer, and the “Southern Sichuan Early Crayfish” from Yibin hits the market in December. With 27 provinces farming crayfish, a staggered supply system is basically mature. This kind of nationwide layout capability is something the US lobster industry wouldn’t even dare to dream of—they only have Maine to rely on.

From 2020 to 2025, the area is still growing, but the growth rate is slowing down—indicating the industry is shifting from “expanding scale” to “improving quality”

The dedication of the engineers, agronomists, and farmers behind this is rarely reported outside. Qianjiang established the nation’s first Crayfish College—no joke, it offers serious training in aquaculture and culinary techniques. Hubei province annually holds over 200 crayfish training sessions, training 27,000 people. Heilongjiang explored a self-breeding model for cold-region crayfish in sub-zero temperatures and succeeded. Hainan implemented an off-season rice-crayfish crop rotation under tropical conditions and made it work too. Each of these achievements might not be “headline news” on its own, but pieced together, they form a heartwarming picture.

Oh, regarding exports—in 2025, China exported 13,700 tons of crayfish, with an export value of $117 million, marking a 17% year-on-year increase in volume. They were exported to a slew of countries including the US, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Japan, the UAE, and Southeast Asia. Chinese crayfish are no longer just for domestic consumption; they are expanding outward. On the flip side, China’s lobster imports in 2024? 36 kilograms. Yes, you read that right, 36 kilograms. Practically negligible.

That Plate of Crayfish You Ate This Summer Is Full of Technology

If you are an average consumer, what do these numbers have to do with you?

The connection is very direct. The price of crayfish over the past couple of years has actually been much cheaper than in previous years. In 2024, the average purchasing price by processing enterprises was 8-9 RMB/jin, down significantly from 11-13 RMB/jin in 2022. Why? Because the yield went up, supply chain efficiency improved, and the cold-chain logistics network was fully established—Qianjiang’s Xia-Gu (Crayfish Valley) achieves 24-hour direct delivery to over 500 cities nationwide with a loss rate of less than 5%. That crayfish on your dinner table in Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen might have been swimming in a Hubei pond just the day before.

If you want to eat but are too lazy to peel, the choices of pre-made meals and casual snacks are constantly expanding. The processing volume of seasoned crayfish increased by 22% year-on-year in 2025, clear-water cooked crayfish by 103%, and casual snack products by 68%. Even Bestore collaborated with Qianjiang Xiahuang to launch products like crispy crayfish tails that can be eaten as snacks.

From an employment perspective—the crayfish industry has driven employment and income growth for over 200,000 people in the city of Qianjiang alone. On a national level, practitioners involved in farming, processing, logistics, catering, condiments, feed, and equipment manufacturing number in the millions. This is a deeply grounded industrial chain. From the fields to the tip of the tongue, there are people working, earning, and making a living at every link.

What does this mean? It means that when you order a plate of spicy crayfish at a night market, you aren’t just eating a dish. You are supporting a massive industrial system involving AI, IoT, cold-chain logistics, biotechnology, and food processing. This system was built step by step by the Chinese people themselves, from rice-crayfish co-culture to year-round availability, from manual peeling to AI sorting, and from a corner of Hubei to 27 provinces.

A day in the life of a Maine fisherman—it’s getting harder to make a living at the mercy of nature

In the End

While writing this piece, I kept thinking about one thing. Over in the US, a fisherman heads out to sea at 4 a.m., drops traps into increasingly warming waters, and prays to catch a few more today. Over in China, an aquaculture farmer opens a mobile app, checks water quality data, adjusts drone feeding parameters, and plans the “Crayfish + Rice + N” rotation model for the next season.

Two kinds of lobsters, two paths. One path is getting narrower, while the other is getting wider.

Over 30.5 million mu of water, 3.45 million tons of crayfish, and 450 billion RMB in output value. These numbers aren’t just shouted out; they are cultivated.

References:

—— Lyra Celest @ 湍流 τ.