_The Secret Life of Lobsters_ by Trevor Corson is an engaging look at the natural history of _Homarus americanus_, the American lobster and the history of the lobster fishery.
The biology of lobsters is well-covered in this book. Lobsters take about seven years to become sexually active (which is also about the amount of time it takes for them to reach harvestable size). Adult lobsters spend the winter far from shore (often 20 miles), frequently on mud plains 200-300 feet underwater, but with the arrival of spring migrate to warmer, shallower, inshore waters, sometimes just 15-20 feet below water, seeking to find the warmest sheltered places so they could safely molt and then return to deeper water. As the lobster molts, the calcium drains out of it shell and is stored in a pair of reservoirs called gastroliths, located to either side of the stomach, which is ingested by the lobster after molting (for centuries humans ate gastroliths in the belief they served medicinal purposes).
Lobsters will seek to evict smaller lobsters from desirable homes and even in some cases several neighboring smaller lobsters to make a larger home (something generally done without much violence if the lobsters are of clearly different sizes but fights occur if they are more evenly matched).
Lobsters are either right- or left-handed, favoring either the right or left claw for crushing and the other for seizing and cutting. Lobsters as adults can fling themselves backwards with rapid contractions of their abdominal muscles, but in their two week-long postlarva stage, for once in their life the can swim forward, with their little claws outstretched (leading some to call this stage the "superlobster" stage).
The techniques of lobster fishing are also covered (the author served for a time as a sternman on a ship). Lobster traps are divided into two sections (a kitchen, which contains a bag of bait, and one or two parlors, which hold the lobsters until the trap is pulled up) and are built using steel rings that corrode slowly in seawater, eventually disintegrating and allowing lobsters to escape from lost traps. The traps are secured to buoys by special ropes, the top half containing lead filament to keep it sunken and away from boat propellers, the bottom half buoyant so as to not be abraded on rocks below).
Lobstermen measure lobsters with a brass ruler called the "gauge," part of a minimum-size law that has been in effect in Maine since 1895 to allow lobsters to survive until breeding age (and starting in 1933 the gauge also delineated a maximum size, a law that Maine pioneered to protect older lobsters, which produce vast numbers of eggs). If a female lobster with eggs showed up in a trap, a lobsterman used a fish knife and cut a quarter-inch triangle out of the tail flipper (a "V-notch," making such a lobster a "V-notcher"); this triangular cut would make it illegal to sell that lobster if it was caught again, whether or not it was bearing eggs. Though at first fishermen had to be forced to throw back egg-bearing lobsters (lobster eggs were a delicacy in 19th century London), eventually Maine lobstermen made V-notches of their own volition starting in the 1950s.
Lobstermen have lots of names for lobsters. In addition to V-notchers, there are "eggers" (those caught while bearing eggs), "shorts" (undersize lobsters, thrown back), "shedders" (newly molted lobsters that now meet the minimum legal size requirement), "chicken" lobsters (or "chix;" lobsters below a pound and a quarter, the size most in demand for clambakes and thought to be saleable at a price most consumers could afford), and "selects" (lobsters with a three-and-a-half inch carapace and weighing a pound and a quarter or more, more expensive than chicken lobsters and the size that many regulators and scientists pushed lobstermen to catch).
There has been much debate over the years on how to manage the lobster industry, with scientists and many government regulators on one side, convinced that the lobsters were in decline, that too many lobsters that had just reached legal size were being taken or in fact too many were being taken before they became sexually mature, and the lobstermen, who didn't believe that scientists and regulators knew themselves just how many eggers and V-notchers were out there (and contended that their detractors refused to either come on the boats and see for themselves or believe the lobstermen's own data).
Lobster research received a great deal of attention in the book as well. Researchers Jelle Atema and Diane Cowan working at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts did pioneering research in studying lobster sex pheromones, sensory organs, and mating practices and the research the author described made for interesting reading. Bob Steneck, working in the wild, did important research on the types of habitat (young lobsters needed areas with small rocks for hiding, while older lobsters needed bigger boulders) and shelters (cataloguing them as either "restricted-fit" or "relaxed-fit") lobsters preferred in the wild. During the course of his research Bob became friends with two lobstermen by the name of Jack Merrill and Bruce Fernald, residents of Little Cranberry Island, one of the fourteen remaining year-round Maine island fishing communities.
Despite an increasing number of traps and lobstermen, the Maine lobster catch totals hovers around 20 million pounds annually. Bob and other researchers concluded that a fixed amount of seafloor shelter may cap the number of new lobsters. This demographic bottleneck would limit the number of lobsters that reached adulthood, regardless of how many eggs were produced.
Interestingly, another demographic bottleneck appears to no longer exist. Once cod in their millions feasted on lobsters of a certain size; "the young adults that today wander freely and supply a vibrant fishery, would have been attacked by cod the instant" they were of a size to attract their attention, surviving only if they outgrew their predators, but with the cod all but extinct, that bottleneck is gone.
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Bought a new book, received a used one
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2018
Paid for a new book and got a used one. Not worth returning but disappointend in the quality. Second time we have received a damaged book by amazon that was supposed to be brand new.
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2018
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Great way to learn about lobsters without it being a ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 19, 2017
Read to Me
Everything you've ever wanted to know about lobsters.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 13, 2016J. Macgillivray
Surprisingly Interesting!
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 15, 2008
