Less than half price: How to snap a bargain lobster

Mooloolaba Fish Market’s Kristian Penny shares his seafood tips as lobster prices have been slashed due to COVID-19.

Christmas shoppers after something fancy for the festive dinner this year are in luck - lobster prices have been slashed as suppliers look to move excess export stock.

Coles and Woolworths purchased an oversupply of WA rock lobster this season in a bid to help struggling farmers.

The change in price is the result of reduced trade to China, which accounts for about 95 per cent of the export market.

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Western Rock lobsters can be snapped up for just $20 each - less than half the price they were last year - at the big supermarket chains.

Mooloolaba Fish Market's Kristian Penny advised shoppers to get in early and avoid the queues at his store.

He said his shop would go through more than 20 tonnes of prawns and 4000 dozen oysters over the festive season.

"Your best buys at the moment and obviously the biggest sellers are going to be your prawns, crabs, bugs, oysters," Mr Penny said.

"All your ready to eat stuff as well, no-one wants to be slaving away in the hot kitchen come Christmas Day with these hot summer days.

"Prawns are really great value now I highly recommend people getting in nice and early and purchasing even frozen prawns and doing a defrost.

"You can beat the lines and you can save yourself at least $5 to $10 dollars a kilo just by purchasing your prawns now."

Mooloolaba Fish Market's Kristian Penny is ready for the Christmas seafood rush.

Mr Penny said it was hard to predict what prices would look like next week.

"It comes to demand, obviously there's a huge demand for product so the prices are unfortunately going to go up a little bit over Christmas period," he said.

"It all really depends on the catches, we've had all the boats stuck in the ports with the weather we've just had but they're all back to full steam now.

"They'll be back just before Christmas so it really depends on the quality and the quantity of the catches they get then.

"We are expecting some pretty big things, we needed this rain and wind to stir up things a little bit, flush all these estuaries out to get everything going."

For those stressing about picking up their produce, never fear the Mooloolaba Fish Market has you covered.

"We're doing a 38 hour stint," Mr Penny said.

"We open on December 23 at 6am and we go right through to 8pm on December 24, it's a crazy time.

"This year we've used another initiative with the COVID-19 plan, we've got a fast lane going.

"For the people who just want the incidentals like cooked prawns, sand crabs, oysters, bugs, lobsters, you can purchase those in a pack style set menu, just so people can get a quick flow though, straight in and straight out."

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