Lobster has been a phenomenal success story, with a commercial fishery that has generated enormous wealth and fueled global appetites for one of the world's most recognizable luxury foods. The great lobster boom that began in the 1990s has also led to violent fights over who has the right catch North America's most valuable seafood, including for Canada's Indigenous people who until now have been excluded from this industry. But overfishing and climate change are pushing lobster toward a cliff.

By 2050, it's expected that warming ocean waters in the Gulf of Maine will cut lobster populations by two thirds. In places like Maine, the heart of America's lobster industry, fishermen who don't see a future in lobster are already selling their boats and becoming farmers, growing kelp and raising oysters. Unlike previous fishery collapses, there's no other large-scale wild seafood species left that fishermen can switch to. The economic upheaval expected to follow the decline of lobster will devastate coastal communities in both Canada and the U.S. that have come to rely so much on it.

Greg Mercer takes readers on a global journey inside this precarious moment for the lobster industry, to show the money and heartache, and the danger and violence, tied up in it. Along the way, he explores lobster's remarkable history, the gold-rush mentality that surrounds it, and examines what the future holds for this most precious shellfish.