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The Catch Of The Day

By Knute Hogan,

The Culinarian Magazine

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AMERICAN LOBSTER//February 2008

American Lobster, once considered a "poverty food", can be found from the Canadian Maritime Provinces to the Carolinas. Individual states manage lobster fishing within their three-mile boundaries. Since lobsters caught near shore and offshore look exactly the same when they are loaded onto the dock, it is important that interstate and federal regulations complement each other. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, formed in 1942, includes fifteen eastern seaboard states. The federal partners in lobster management are also part of the Commission process and work to complement the states efforts adopting regulations for lobster harvesting between three and two hundred miles from shore.

All states and the federal government share a minimum legal size and have determined that egg-bearing females must be released. A voluntary conservation action has the lobstermen cutting a V-notch in the tail for easy identification.

Lobstermen have traditionally protected their share of the resource. Lobstermen of one community will often lay their strings of traps in one direction so they don't tangle their lines in someone else's gear. In Maine the term "from away" refers to outsiders and, should one "from away" enter a community's fishing grounds, he may at first find his gear has been moved. If he persists in infringing on territory, his traps may be severed from the line.

The American lobster is most abundant in Maine waters and closely resembles its European cousin, though the western Atlantic crustacean has more robust tearing and crushing claws.

The clawless spiny lobster or rock lobster is a distant relation of the American lobster and can be found in warmer waters to the south and along the California coast. This lobster has no large front claws but rather heavily-armored antennae which can inflict damage with whip-like movement against an opponent. Unlike the American lobster, spiny lobsters often share habitat with one another among coral reefs.

Much has been said about lobsters mating process, a complex, touching courtship that protects the female when she is most vulnerable just after she sheds her shell. A female lobster will approach a male's den and release a pheromone, but the female lobster does the choosing. The male will emerge from his den claws raised ready to engage in battle but soon realizes the female is ready to mate. The two will remain in the den after mating until the females new shell has begun to harden.

Pregnancy can take up to twenty months. After mating, the female stores the sperm for many months. When she is ready to lay her eggs, she turns onto her back and cups her tail. As many as twenty thousand eggs are pushed out of her ovaries and are fertilized as they pass through the sperm receptacle, marked by a small triangular shield at the base of her walking legs. The eggs will adhere to the bottom of the female's tail.

She will carry the eggs for ten months, fanning them with her swimmerets to bring them oxygen and to clean off any debris that might stick to the developing eggs. Finally, when it's time for the eggs to hatch, the female lifts her tail into the current and sets them adrift in the sea which may take up to two weeks.

Most lobster larva is found within the top meter of the sea's surface. Here the lobster will molt three times before it begins to look like a miniature adult. While it spends the next several weeks swimming in a water column it will eventually seek out a hard bottom with plenty of places to hide. During its first year or so a small lobster rarely ventures out of hiding. Of the many thousand eggs a female will release, only one tenth of one percent will survive beyond the first four weeks of life.

A lobster will molt (sheds its shell) in an average of every ten weeks during its first five year, after which molting occurs about once a year, until it becomes quite large followed by several years between molts. It stays in hiding for a week or two until the new shell is fortified against predators. Lobsters living in warm water grow faster than those in cold water. It has been observed s that lobsters raised in water at seventy degrees Fahrenheit can grow to one pound in less than two years, while in the cold waters of the North Atlantic; it will take six years to reach this market size. Males tend to grow more rapidly than females, and females may go two years between molts when they are breeding. In the largest lobsters, claws make up as much as forty-five percent of the total body weight.

Lobsters are not social creatures and will engage in combative behavior and cannibalize their neighbors if put in close proximity to one another; this coupled with their slow growth cycle makes it an unlikely candidate for an aquaculture program. A more viable approach has been to keep them captive from egg to hatching to the stage when they start to settle to the bottom. This seed lobster program is funded by a portion of the license fees. An estimated one hundred thousand larval lobsters are released into coastal waters each year.

Lobsters are not filter feeders like mussels, oysters and clams. Toxins in the water will be concentrated in their flesh but meat eaters like lobsters, crabs, and fish do not filter plankton from sea water, so they are safe to eat during an outbreak of red tide.

Most often steamed in salted water for roughly ten minutes lobster offers a healthy alternative protein. Studies show that a three and a half ounce portion of lobster meat contains ninety calories, compared to one hundred sixty calories for the same amount of chicken and two hundred eight calories for sirloin steak. Lobster also contains omega-3 fatty acids that help reduce heart related ailments.

The health of the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery is very good and improving. The increasing stock over the past fifteen years has been attributed in part to warmer water temperature as well as fewer Atlantic cod, the lobsters' main predator. Annual landings now fall in the vicinity of thirty five thousand tons for this once considered "poverty food".

CAVIAR//12.2008

JOHN DORY//09.2008

REDFISH//08.2008

ABALONE//03.2008

AMERICAN LOBSTER//02.2008

MUSSELS//01.2008

AQUACULTURE//11.2007

PACIFIC ROCKFISH//10.2007

ARTIC CHAR //08.2007

BARRAMUNDI//07.2007

WALLEYE PIKE//07.2007

SOFT SHELL CRAB//08.2007

PACIFIC SALMON//05.2007

PACIFIC HALIBUT//04.2007

KAMPACHI //03.2007

SCALLOPS //02.2007

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