PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – Maine’s lobster fishermen braced for a difficult summer this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the season was unexpectedly decent.

The pandemic has posed significant challenges for the state’s lobster fishery, which is the nation’s largest, but members of the industry reported a steady catch and reasonable prices at the docks.

Prices for consumers and wholesalers were low in the early part of the summer, but picked up in August to the point where they were about on par with a typical summer.

The Maine lobster industry is in the midst of a multiyear boom, and fishermen have caught more than 100 million pounds of the crustaceans for a record nine years in a row.