Portland Fish Exchange Prices and Sales

The Portland Fish Exchange is located in Portland, Maine and is noted as "America's first all-display fresh fish and seafood auction."[40] Bringing together fishers and dealers, the Exchange holds daily auctions conducted in order of species and size. Currently, sold/consigned weight and average price data are available for cod from 1997 to 2001 and can be seen below.

Graph created by E. Brazer Jr.

This graph indicates that the average price of cod increases as the amount of landed cod decreases. The highest average price of $1.33 comes at a time when the consigned/sold weight is at a low of approximately 150,000 lbs. The lowest average price is just over $1.00 and occurs when the consigned/sold weight is at its highest level of approximately 325,000 lbs. This represents one of the fundamental concepts in economics- supply and demand. If there is a reduced supply of cod then the demand is going to increase and the price will rise. Conversely, if the market is flooded with cod then the demand will decrease because more people are able to purchase cod. With this decrease in demand comes a decrease in price. The trends at the Portland Fish Exchange follow this precisely- whenever consigned/sold weight decreases the price increases and whenever the consigned/sold weight increases the price accordingly drops.

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