NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Terese Pearson does not do technology: not Instagram or Twitter. She’s even suspicious of some more time-tested bits of digital innovation.

“I need to give you directions because your GPS won’t find it,” she’ll say in urgent tones.

She’s talking about Pearson’s Port, the Newport Beach fish market she runs with her husband, Tommy. 

It is off the beaten path at 100 CA-1 in Newport Beach, Pearson’s Port floats just off-shore, a freeway overhead, a bluff behind, and bikini wearing paddleboarders sliding past on still waters.

The shop sits at the intersection of the old and new, holding onto a direct-to-consumer business model that has steered the business away from the rocky shoals of this year’s global pandemic.

This year they will service a long-held tradition for their customers: the Christmas lobster.

For them, it’s hardly out of the ordinary. The business has been selling lobster for 50 years – since Tommy’s parents owned and ran the business. 

Not the cold water lobsters of Maine with claws that can crush hand bone, but the smaller – some say tastier – California spiny lobster. And this year, the price has passed what even the most seasoned lobster trappers thought possible.

Local fishmongers said the price last year was about $15 or $16. As the summer of 2020 wore on and the October lobster season approached, there was talk it may drop to $8 a pound. But something in the market changed. Restaurants haven’t purchased an ordinary share, but somehow the price has passed $32 a pound.

“It’s a weird thing in an already weird year,” said Scott Breneman, who runs a fishing boat that sells to restaurants and foreign distributors. 

Since restaurants are not buying, Breneman plans to shut down for a month or so once the holidays pass. Local businesses are not buying, with most of the product going to dealers who sell overseas.

The Pearsons, however, are expecting to be sold out, as they are every year. The shop typically offloads 200 to 500 lobsters every Christmas, and customers know to pre-order to guarantee their deep-sea crustacean.

“My job, my family’s job is to serve the community,” Terese said.

This year her lobsters are priced just under $29. 

It’s a local deal that goes with the shop’s almost entirely local offering. Sometimes they source cold-water fish like Norwegian halibut; this year it’s been tough to do so. Everything local is captured in traps by Tommy in all his familiar fishing waters.

This year, the high-priced fare is the lobster, but orders have already flown in, and they on track to sell out again.

“We know how lucky we are,” she said.