If You Give A Girl A Lobster
By Sara Klimek
April 30, 2018
I watched my dad intently as he twisted the legs off individually and sunk the meat into butter, and I tried to replicate the motion myself. If I had known earlier about the process of getting that lobster to my table, I probably would have enjoyed my meal much less. I vaguely understood how one plunges the lobster into boiling water to kill it, but now I see why my dad would send me to play with my dolls while he operated the stove on lobster night.
One day, when I was about ten, I asked my dad about getting a pet lobster. I figured it was just like adopting a dog, except you buy one you really fancy from supermarket, get a bucket of saltwater from the ocean, and feed it with whatever fish scraps you had at your disposal. My dad laughed and told me that I could not get companionship from a cold-blooded creature valued solely for its meat. He then recommended that I should find a rock to call man’s best friend. When I was sixteen, however, my dream of having my very own lobster turned out to more attainable than I had previously imagined.
Better than one lobster, I got a hundred of them. They were much smaller than the ones at the supermarket; the biggest one was about half-an-inch long. For everyone else, this was just the average day at the Marine Science Magnet High School in Groton, CT. New species arrived every day. One week it was a horseshoe crab, the next it was 10 unwanted goldfish from the pet store, and a month later, 300 young tilapia from a farm in Louisiana. But for me, one hundred new lobsters represented something larger than I could surmise at the time.
My teacher, mentor, and lab director, Eric Litvinoff showed these tiny crustaceans to my Aquatic Husbandry class. I was really intrigued by how small they were, and how they responded to 10 sets of eyes peering into the 250 gallon tank. Mystic Aquarium, a partner with the Marine Science Magnet High School aquaculture program, donated them to the school for research and culturing. One of their animals, a rare blue lobster, had just given birth to nearly 1,000 babies.
After talking about lobster anatomy with my class, I discovered that the American Lobster, Homarus americanus, rarely reproduce in captivity. As a result, scientists are often unable to study the lobster gestation period, the number of offspring per individual in one reproductive cycle, or the survival rate of newborns. Ideally, scientists would be able to study these behaviors in their natural habitats, but wild lobster populations are severely threatened by one of their top predators: humans.
Part of the reason lobster fishing is so high-stakes is the demand often outpaces the stock. Viewed today as an expensive delicacy, lobsters are prized by Americans. I grew up in a shoreline community, and experienced the anticipation of watching lobstermen and their families pull up traps after a long day of work. They were proud of what they were doing and how they made their money at the end of the day. Who was I, as someone who worked in a lab and grew lobster, to try and outcompete small families, who were willing to sacrifice their boats and reputation just to feed the consumers’ craving for lobster?
To date, there are no large aquaculture efforts to grow the American lobster. The offshore American Lobster fisheries are managed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which receives representation in states down the East Coast from Maine to North Carolina. The commission regulates the size of lobster pots, total trawl length, and size limits on captured lobsters. However, there may be discrepancies between the areas in which people fish for lobsters; if lobster pots are located in areas with inconsistent state and federal regulations, the restrictions may be more stringent. Historically, these differences have resulted in variable catches from year to year, often resulting in overexploitation.
The American lobster industry is incredibly lucrative, and often toes the line of legality. In 2016, a lobstering “turf war” in Maine produced a $15,000 bounty on a group of trap-cutters who frequently cut competitors’ pots so they cannot be retrieved. There have even been reports of lobster fishers ramming into other lobster boats at full speed, physical altercations, and gun violence as a result of these fishers working outside of their territory. Historically, pot sabotagers in Maine were referred to as “lobster gangs.” Lobster fishing has not always been as serious as this. When settlers first came to America, lobsters were washing up on shores. They fed poor colonists, indentured servants, and prisoners for decades up until World War II, when lobster prices hit an all time high. The heightened post-war economy doubled the per capita consumption of lobster.
I encountered this dichotomy frequently in my work: fishers attack aquaculture facilities and regulators because they feel that they are not being treated fairly for the work that they do. However, if regulations were to decrease, we would be prioritizing humans over the ecological integrity of lobster populations, and putting the larger ecosystem at risk. If you regulate the fishery too much, you risk jeopardizing the economies of shoreline communities. Aquaculture, when used as a supplement, can keep fishers on their boats and lobster in their habitats. The challenge, however, is getting the aquaculture into fruition.
Some would call me foolish for thinking that I had a “green thumb” for growing lobster. I treated them like any other species. I fed them regularly, exposed them to human contact, and helped teach other students about them. Despite my efforts, we lost about 70 percent of our lobsters within the first three months of the project. Some had died during molt, others got in territorial disputes, and others were not able to adjust to conditions in the lab. Finding food that was digestible, protein-rich, and tiny enough to fit in their mouths was only half the battle.
If it was any other organism, I would have probably felt more discouraged than I did. I felt an unconditional connection to the lives of the tiny lobsters, which I had not experienced with any of our other species. I owed it to the entire aquaculture community, which had given us the lobsters in the first place, and challenged us to “make it work.” I owed it to the fishers, who, without management, would one day run out of lobsters to fill their traps. Most of all, I owed it to myself for making something meaningful out of my mistakes.
The aquaculture program consulted Mystic Aquarium when only four of our lobsters remained. They had three of their original one hundred left, and provided us with some tips on how to keep them alive and to make them grow. The formula for success would be as follows: leave molted shells in the tank as a natural source of calcium, feed “crustacean gel,” (a concoction of shells, fish remains, and whatever was under the sea) to each one, and provide each with a small PVC pipe to seek shelter in. The results slowed our mortality rate significantly; we did not lose any more lobsters until nearly seven months later.
I decided to name the last survivor of the original lobster group Jefferson. He lived until October of 2017 and passed away peacefully in his own tank. He had almost doubled in size since he came into our care. Without him, we would not have been able to compile research and learn what strategies work best to culture lobsters in captivity. Since October, other students have worked on researching the lobster, learning about their current fishing regulations and understanding the importance of aquaculture in preserving current wild stocks. What can we, as aquaculturists, do better next time?
The prognosis of the “lobster project” was dismal from the beginning. However, I do not consider it to be a failure by any stretch of the imagination. The consumption of lobster will not slow down any time soon, but neither will our efforts to preserve the human and ecological communities that rely on them.
