Shellfish: The Regal Crustacean

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by Jan adkins that rascal

the LOBSTER is the regent of seafood. Before his ferocious, spiked and clawed visage, his sweet, white flesh, all other creatures are gastronomically subservient. The lobster was once so cheap and plentiful along the New England coast that windrows of wave-stranded lobsters were pitchforked into draycarts and ploughed under cornfields as fertilizer. Times, as your grandpa will doubtless tell you, have changed.

Today, the lobster is worth its weight in negotiable securities, and is the object of a jealous, regulated, difficult search. Its price fluctuate through the year, and the unadorned crustacean can command over $2.50 a pound. Automated lobster boats at the edge of the continental shelf haul great catches, but inshore the single lobsterman still plies his strenuous, chancy trade with long hours, simple tools, and old skills.

Our native lobster, Homarus Americanus , is seldom seen below Long Island (a clawless variety inhabits warmer waters). It thrives in cold, oxygenated water, making a home of rocky bottoms where it can back into crevices to defend itself. In its adolescence it is a white fingerling, soft and vulnerable. It must grow five years

to attain market size, forming a hard exoskeleton and shedding as it is outgrown. Lapses in lobster catch are periodically due to the shedding cycle, since the pale, soft "shedders" hide beneath rocks or in crevices until their shells are prepared to defend them. Young lobsters shed several time a year, older lobsters about once a year.

There are three lobster licenses: the home license allows up to 10 pots (lobstertraps) for family use only, the cost about $20.00; the commercial license allows an unlimited number of pots, permits commercial sale, and costs considerable more; some states issue a permit which allows divers to catch lobsters by hand. The licenses are issued by the state department of fisheries or wildlife, and most states have a length-of-residency requirement. A special note of warning: you would do better to mess with a lobster man's woman than to mess with his gear. This is an unquestioned wisdom afloat.

Lobstermen wish to set their pots or string of pots on a cold, big-rocked bottom, out of navigation channels, heavily oxygenated and little disturbed. To find good grounds, he can consult the charts, looking for the asterisks of rocks, and for the bottom notations "rocky" and "boulders." He can locate ledges and outcroppings, wrecks, and the riprap surrounding navigaion lights. Sounding by leadline or by fathometer (which can distinguish between sandy, rocky and bouldered bottoms) can be useful. In clear water a water glass or scouting by a diver might be helpful. Intimate knowledge of the bottom and its currents is the lobsterman's most useful tool. Local knowledge is essential. As in most fishing—indeed, in any seawork—the newcomer needs the help of the old guys, the old men and the experience fishermen.

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