The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean [Hardcover]

Trevor Corson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004

In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and an eccentric band of renegade biologists, journalist Trevor Corson escorts the reader onto the slippery decks of fishing boats, through danger-filled scuba dives, and deep into the churning currents of the Gulf of Maine to learn about the secret undersea lives of lobsters.

In revelations from the laboratory and the sea that are by turns astonishing and humorous, the lobster proves itself to be not only a delicious meal and a sustainable resource but also an amorous master of the boudoir, a lethal boxer, and a snoopy socializer with a nose that lets it track prey and paramour alike with the skill of a bloodhound.

The Secret Life of Lobsters is a rollicking oceanic odyssey punctuated by salt spray, melted butter, and predators lurking in the murky depths.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the 1980s, the lobster population in the waters off the coast of Maine was declining, threatening disaster for the state's lobster fishing industry. Government scientists attributed the drop-off to overfishing and recommended raising the minimum legal size of lobsters that could be harvested. Lobstermen disagreed, contending that their longstanding practice of returning oversized lobsters to the sea as brood stock would take care of the problem. In this intriguing and entertaining book, Corson, a journalist who has reported on such diverse subjects as organ transplants and Chinese sweatshops, brings together the often conflicting worlds of commercial lobstermen and marine scientists, showing how the two sides joined forces and tried for 15 years to solve the mystery of why the lobsters were disappearing. He brings the story to life by concentrating on the lobstermen and their families who live in one Maine fishing community, Little Cranberry Island, and alternating narratives of their lives with accounts of the research of scientists who, obsessed with the curious life of lobsters, conduct experiments that are often as strange and complex as the lobsters themselves. Corson provides more information about the lobster's unusual anatomy, eating habits and sex life than most readers will probably want to know, but he makes it all fascinating, especially when he juxtaposes observations of human behavior and descriptions of the social life of lobsters. However, by the end of the book, the answer to the puzzle remains elusive.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Some like their lobster dipped in drawn butter; others prefer their lobster laced with electronic monitors. Plunging into its cold North Atlantic home, a prizewinning alternative-press writer sheds the light of investigative journalism on a crustacean attracting as much attention in recent years from curious biologists as from hungry diners. As deftly as a lobsterman handling the coiled ropes of his trap buoys, Corson knots into a single brisk narrative the differing--often conflicting--perspectives of the fishermen who catch and sell lobsters, the marine scientists who track and explain the creatures, and the environmentalists who lobby for increased legal protections for the species. The narrative focuses particularly on the growing tensions between Maine fishermen, who harvested record numbers of lobsters in the nineties, and federal officials interpreting disputed demographic data as evidence of overfishing. The story of how these tensions intensify will teach readers a great deal about a species that deploys more than mere claws when it wages war over profits and seafood. A lively yet conceptually sophisticated work. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1ST edition (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060555580
• ISBN-13: 978-0060555580
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Marine Life

More About the Author

Author photo by Matt Carr Photography.

Trevor Corson spent two years studying philosophy in China, another three years in Japan living in temples and studying Buddhism, and two more years working as a commercial lobsterman off the Maine coast before becoming a bestselling author. He has been an award-winning magazine editor and has written about food, religion, foreign affairs, and a wide variety of other topics for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Atlantic Monthly, where his first book, The Secret Life of Lobsters, began as an essay that was included in The Best American Science Writing. The Secret Life of Lobsters was named a best nature book of the year by USA Today and Discover, a best book of the year by Time Out New York, and went on to become a worldwide bestseller in the popular-science category. Trevor's second book, The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice (originally titled The Zen of Fish in hardcover), was selected as an Editors' Choice by the New York Times Book Review; it also won "Best American Food Literature Book" of 2007 in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and was selected as a Best Food Book of the Year by Zagat. Trevor is a frequent public speaker and his work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, ABC World News with Charles Gibson, NPR's All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, as well as numerous local television and radio programs; he also appears on the Food Network's hit TV show Iron Chef America. He has been a Knight Fellow at M.I.T. in the Investigative Science Journalism Boot Camp and a Visiting Writer at the University of Memphis, and he teaches at the New School and other educational institutions in New York City. He speaks Japanese and Chinese and can converse with lobsters using their own language, which involves urine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I don't think we're going to see a decline...", June 2, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean (Hardcover)

For anyone with an interest in Maine lobsters which goes beyond the plastic bibs and melted butter, this is the "Everything You Always Wanted to Know..." resource. After spending two years aboard commercial lobster boats, meeting scientists dedicated to conserving the lobster as a natural resource, and studying the research about the lobster's habitat, breeding habits, and possible endangerment, author Trevor Corson has produced a highly readable, balanced account of what is happening in the industry and the remarkable co-operation which has evolved between some lobstermen and scientists.

Little Cranberry Island, just south of Mt. Desert Island and Acadia National Park in Maine, is a lobstering community with the perfect lobster habitat just off its coast, its lobstermen as concerned about preserving their livelihoods for the future as are scientists (many working for the government) about protecting the coast from "over-fishing." Until recently, however, the two groups had not pooled their knowledge, and scientists had not done enough on-site studies of how and where the lobsters live and breed and what constitutes the true threats to their continued existence. No one on either side really knew whether cyclical declines in the number of pounds caught were natural or induced by man.

Concentrating on the roles of individuals on the island and noted scientists engaged in unusual research, humanizing all of them and describing their day-to-day lives, Corson delves into seemingly arcane subjects, such as the lobster's mating rituals, molting and its effects, battles for territory (both by lobsters and fishermen), ocean currents that carry lobster larvae, natural "lobster nurseries," and the role of the extremely large lobsters which sometimes live in very deep water. The book is entertaining, and in a few cases humorous (a discussion of lobster courtship juxtaposed against the courtship of a lobsterman), but it is uncompromising in its attention to serious research and what has been discovered about the lobster's life cycle. Filled with insights into how and why scientists, lobstermen, the government, and the lobsters themselves all continue to behave as they do, this well-written account is accessible to scientists and laymen alike. Mary Whipple

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Engaging Glimpse of Lobsters' Hidden Habits and Habitats, June 26, 2004

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean (Hardcover)

I have to admit that I was predisposed not to like Trevor Corson's THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS. I know that I like to eat lobsters, that I prefer not to cook them myself, and that I need to have someone else help me crack the claws open to get out the meat. That's about all I ever knew, or cared to know, about lobsters before reading this book. I was skeptical that someone could actually write a whole book about lobsters, let alone that I would want to read it. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying this nonfiction book that is part scientific mystery, part adventure story, and even part romance.

There are two main groups of human characters in Corson's book. One group is the lobstermen of Little Cranberry Island off the coast of Maine. These rugged men, many of whose families have been lobstering for generations, work incredibly hard and understand more about lobsters than just about anyone. They're also surprisingly complex folks, some of whom hold degrees in economics or marine biology or who dabble in painting.

The other group is the scientists who are dedicated to understanding lobster habitats and behavior in the hopes of swelling their population. These scientists alternate between skepticism of the lobstermen's own theories for ensuring a healthy lobster population and grudging respect for the lobstermen's time-tested methods. The scientists are a quirky bunch, too. One fellow plays a flute made out of a lobster claw, and one scientist becomes a waitress --- at a lobster restaurant --- because it's the only job that gives her enough flexibility to conduct her research. In many ways, THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS is an account of how these two groups, often at odds with one another, work over a period of years to discover why --- and if --- the lobster population is declining.

The third subject of Corson's book is the lobsters themselves. Corson probes the creatures' habitat, their development, and even their sex lives in minute detail. These sometimes violent and graphic descriptions of lobsters' behavior are broken up into short segments, alternating with accounts of the humans' own dramas. This technique helps keep the reader from growing overwhelmed by the amount of information presented. Occasionally, the author tries a little too hard to draw explicit analogies between the lobsters and their human counterparts ("Jack was a bit like a large lobster himself."). The text is most successful when it allows readers to discover the parallels for themselves.

These connections are rich, though, and the mystery of the lobsters' survival is compelling. Even if Corson's book doesn't answer all the questions it poses, it will make you appreciate your next lobster dinner --- and the people who helped bring it to you --- in a whole new way.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a great sleeper, July 10, 2005

By 

CS Parmelee (Guilford, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean (Hardcover)

Dust cover makes the book look old and worn, but this up-to-date book has astonishing new information, even for someone who has known about lobsters for decades. You won't believe the life of these interesting critters down at the bottom of the cold sea!
But the story is almost equally about the scientists who study the lobsters and their stories are fun and interesting too.
This book kept me turning the pages and chapters to find out more about the personalities under water and the guys on the surface.