| Average age for a lobster; 5-7 years old for minimum catchable size.
Lobsters are graded on the basis of the length of their carapace,
from the front 'horn' to where the main body joins the tail. Depending
what state's laws prevail, this length should be from 3.0" (NH)
to 3.375" (Maine). This yields a lobster of about 1lb for a 3.0"
carapace to 1.25-1.5 lb for a 3.375" carapace. Maine has been
increasing the minimum size for the lobsters to give them a longer
time to breed. It takes about 2-3 years longer for them to grow
the extra 3/8" and hence should provide a large breeding stock.
You are quite right about most of them being caught when they reach
'legal' size. The plan is to increase the time between lobsters can be
sexually mature (about 4-5 years old) and when they are caught.
Other interesting trivia, lobsters live a long time. A 42 lb lobster
caught in recent years was estimated to be over 100 years old.
Lobsters migrate long distances, apparently spending a good portion
of their time in deep waters. This is why areas don't necessarily
become fished out.
Some attempts ahve been made to cultivate lobsters, but the long
growing times and other factors make this difficult. What some
lobstermen in Maine have been doing is raising small lobster 'fry'
and releasing them in the sea after about a year. The theory (never
confirmed in point of fact) is that by nuturing them through the
1st year the survival rate would be higher.
It is also illegal to retain a female lobster that is bearing roe, no
matter what the size. The female's roe adheres to the inside tail
section, which is how you can tell a lobster's sex. Females have a
slightly different tail shape (somewhat wide/flatter), and they have a
'hairier' swim fins on the inside of the tail to give a better surface
for the roe to adhere to. Many female lobsters contain roe inside in
the tail but it is never expulsed except when a male is near and
courting. Unfortunately many lobstermen (amateur) will scrape off the
row on an egg bearing female so that the lobster can be retained.
To my knowledge there is no maximum size that can be trapped except
for the practical limitation of what will fit through the lobster
trap hole. Really big lobsters are caught by trawling in deep water.
/jim
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| Thanks a lot for your information.
Some background to my questions:
I sail in the Mediteranien.Its very hard to find there lobsters anymore,
even fish is getting scarce.
On the other hand,in Switzerland lobsters are sold now in supermarkets
like potato chips.
Sad to hear,that all this lobsters have once "roamed the open seas",
enjoyed some nice afternoon breeze,survived so many years ,and in the
end got frozen to a tasteless "something",transported 5000 miles and
sold for nearly nothing.
Peter
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| Good comments by the previous replies. Some additional notes:
- The size of a lobster (how it grows) is determined by the number of
moults, usually 3 per year for a females and 2 per year for a male after
the first two years of growth (when there are 4-5 each.) After moulting,
the new shell takes a few days to harden, during which the smart lobster
is very well hidden and not tempted to venture out.
- The measurement of a lobster by gauge is along the carapace from behind
the eye, not the horn. (Picky, picky...)
- Massachusetts has proposed, and passed as law I think, an increase in
minimum size. I *think* it goes in 1/16" or 1/32" increments from 3-1/8"
up to 3-5/16" over four or five years. (And that is the stuff for major
argument on the waterfront....) Maine's limit has always been higher,
which angers the downeast lobstermen, particularly those near the border.
The Canadian limit is smaller, hence the brisk business in Canadian
lobster *meat*, which makes it tough to determine the size of the source.
You can truck an undersize Canadian lobster through Mass, but you can't
possess or sell it here.
- I'm pretty sure there is a maximum limit, apart from what is able to
crawl through the trap nets. It may apply to sale rather than
possession, but for inshore lobstermen is entirely moot -- they may not
see one lobster over 6 lbs in their traps in a year. The offshore
lobstermen often convert the lobsters to meat on the boat, given time.
It's a real bone of contention as to whether/how much meat comes from
oversize and undersize critters.
- Raising lobsters is difficult at best. First, no one knows much about
their planktonic stage lifestyles and preferences. The other problem is
that they're cannibalistic, and you can't really peg or band their little
tiny claws and expect them to moult, let alone eat much! A common
technique is to use lucite/lexan pigeon hole racks suspended in flowing,
temperature-controlled, filtered water. After some limited success
ventures, the main problem continues to be economic -- it costs a bundle
to do right with a reasonable yield. (Of interest: One lobster farmer on
the Cape a few years back successfully bred his stock to a uniform blue
color, intending to maintain his product's trademark through breeding!)
- Ethical lobstermen everywhere, upon finding a female (as evidenced
unequivocally by the presence of eggs) will cut a notch in the middle
segment of the tail, as a marker to other lobstermen of its sex. Until
fairly recently, that was honored pretty uniformly. Nowadays, I don't
know what the common practices is, though many still do this. One
problem with it is that it takes time, and as fishermen may now run
400-800 traps to get the same yield 100 or fewer might have gotten 20
years ago, it may not happen as much, even if the female is tossed over.
- I agree with Walt, that lobstermen probably won't make Homerus
Americanus extinct, but there's a risk nonetheless. If their food chain
is disrupted by natural or unnatural disaster -- even temporarily -- or
if for any reason the number falls below that which mathematically will
allow a critical number of males and females to find each other, then
there could be problems. Remember that the young are great food to many
fish in their pelagic stage, and the survival rate is at best well down in
the single percentage numbers. Also, we don't know much about what
affects them at that stage.
The greater risk, and a very real one, is that lobstering as an industry
may fail. There is a limit of efficiency in putting out more and more
traps which take bigger and bigger boats, which cost more and more....
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