ARCHIVE: Trevor’s blog posts on Lobsters

Lobstermen on Strike

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 05:44:43 -0400

Over the past week, many Maine lobstermen have been protesting what they feel are the scandalously low prices that dealers are currently paying them for their lobsters. Vacationers in Maine who stop by a lobster pound for dinner might want to take note. The coastal consumer is paying $8 or $9 per pound for lobster. The fishermen are, in many cases, getting less than half that at the wharf. Where’s the rest of the money going?
The lobstermen wonder whether it isn’t lining the dealers’ pockets, and in protest they’ve stopped spending full days at sea hauling traps. Instead, they’ve been tying their boats together in flotillas in the harbors, in view of the dealers’ wharves, to send a signal that they’re displeased. The Bangor Daily News has been covering the action; see articles here and here.

New Species of Lobster Discovered

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:19:59 -0400

Only three new lobster species have been identified in the past 12 years, according to an article in Science in Africa, which reported last fall the discovery of a new species south of Madagascar. The specimens in the photo are estimated to be between 30 and 50 years old. The article states:

These beauties weigh in at up to 4 kgs and were discovered accidentally, when a Spanish fishing vessel working in the Indian Ocean docked in Durban and applied for a permit to export their lobster catch to Europe.
Dr. Charles Griffiths (left), who has discovered over 100 new species in his career, says that “the size of the lobsters is probably due to the fact that it’s an unfished stock.”
The article continues:
There’s an irony to the discovery. ... “There’s a pristine population of really old animals out there and now they will be a free-for-all. It’s very likely they will be exploited.”
Does size matter? In this case, maybe. Very large lobsters are not as marketable as their smaller sibling species.
“The market is for plate-sized lobsters,” Griffiths commented. “One animal per serving. These ones would have to be chopped up!”
Griffiths is still left wondering how the lobsters got to this isolated location initially and how the population is replenished.
“Do drifting larvae originate from Walters Shoals, or from a yet undiscovered parent stock elsewhere, carried by sea currents to the Shoals?”
The answer will determine how localised the population is and how it will react to fishing.
“It leads to the sobering thought that isolated species like this one could be fished to extinction even before they become known to science.”
Thanks to Josh Kurz for bringing this to my attention.

Chow Maine

Mon, 6 Aug 2007 20:36:11 -0400

I’m touring my old stomping grounds in Maine this week, revisiting some of the bookstores and lecture halls where The Secret Life of Lobsters was a big hit. Although rural Maine isn’t exactly the epicenter of American sushi, the reception here for my new book The Zen of Fish has been surprisingly good. This is a little hard to understand, since people in lobstering communities tend to refer to raw fish as “bait.” Just more proof, along with the startling statistics I cite in the book, that sushi has completely invaded the American heartland.

Last night I gave a sushi lecture at Port in a Storm bookstore on Mount Desert Island. A local woman named Chiaolin attended. She told me that she had once considered attending the California Sushi Academy in Los Angeles, where the story in The Zen of Fish takes place. I also learned that she runs an Asian food business on Mount Desert called, what else, Chow Maine. I fell in love as soon as I saw the company’s logo (pictured).

Manhattan Lobster Shack Smackdown

Fri, 3 Aug 2007 23:40:52 -0400

Lobster is at the center of a cutting-edge duel over intellectual copyright in New York City. As described in an article in today’s Christian Science Monitor, the founder and head chef of the famous West Village lobster roll eatery Pearl Oyster Bar, Rebecca Charles, is suing her longtime sous-chef Ed McFarland because he has left her and opened an almost identical haven for lobster rolls a few blocks away. She’s trying to make the case that he’s stolen her restaurant idea.

Sad. I’m sympathetic to Charles. When my book The Secret Life of Lobsters came out, veteran New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant took me to Pearl Oyster Bar to interview me. Charles served me the best lobster roll I’ve ever eaten.

Eddie Murphy & Larry the Lobster

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 12:45:35 -0400

“I just finished reading The Secret Life of Lobsters,” a reader recently wrote to me, “and thoroughly enjoyed it. Who would have thought lobsters behaved that way. ... When I read the section about Mary Tyler Moore rescuing lobsters, it made me think back to a SNL episode. Eddie Murphy did a ‘skit’ about save the lobster. ...”

He did, indeed. It’s a famous episode, one that I, sadly, have yet to see. Eddie Murphy’s lobster skit is actually a perfect follow-up to my entry last week about the ethics of lobster boiling.

On Saturday Night Live, Murphy held up a live lobster he called Larry. He told the audience at home that they would decide Larry’s fate. People were then instructed to call in and vote to spare Larry or boil him.

What I hadn’t realized was that Murphy’s stunt was groundbreaking in a way that had nothing to do with lobsters. It appears to have been one of the first examples of what we take for granted now on shows like American Idol—viewers calling in to cast votes. According to Wikipedia:

In an early example of interactive television, ... Murphy then read two "900" phone numbers, one for those who wanted to spare Larry, and another for those who wanted to see him cooked. In the span of 30 minutes, viewers made nearly 500,000 calls, sending phone traffic soaring. The heavy phone use stood as a record, or near-record for many years. The spike in traffic perplexed AT&T employees, who eventually figured out that Larry was responsible. Though the phone network survived the spike, it was sufficiently threatening to operations that AT&T established communication with the television networks so that they could be warned of potentially disruptive future events; this system remains in use to this day.

So you have Larry the lobster to thank for your personal stake in American Idol—and for the fact that your phone still works while American Idol is on.

Incidentally, Larry narrowly escaped—227,452 callers voted for him to be boiled, while 239,096 voted to save him.

But the story did not have a happy ending. Again, Wikipedia:

On the next week's episode, however, Eddie Murphy raised the subject of Larry the Lobster again, saying that he had received letters protesting the crustacean's treatment the previous week, including one that contained the racist barb "I didn't even know you people liked lobster." Murphy then displayed a boiled lobster on a plate, announced that Larry's stay of execution had been revoked, and ate it. Larry is cited to this day in discussions of cruelty to animals, and in rosters of famous animals.

If anyone finds a video of the Larry the Lobster skit, let me know!

Kill a Lobster, Save Your Soul

Sun, 8 Jul 2007 23:48:45 -0400

The Los Angeles Times ran a story recently about how food shoppers are becoming more concerned about animal welfare. As is so often the case, the writer began with a dramatic vignette about boiling a lobster alive:

Veterinarian Bud Stuart was delighted when he was given a live lobster by a client as extra thanks for saving a dog — at least until the Santa Barbara seafood lover thought about cooking it.

Stuart put the lobster in the freezer, expecting the chill would anesthetize it. Yet, when he later held it above a boiling pot of water, it was still alive and pinching. The crustacean was tasty, but he now vows "never to bring another live lobster into this house. It was one of the most traumatic things I have done."

Stuart credits the lobster with making him think more about how the food he eats is raised. He no longer consumes foie gras — fatty liver produced by overfeeding ducks and geese — and now "supports in any way I can the humane treatment of food animals."

I never know whether to feel amused, frustrated, or enraged when I hear these kinds of stories. If you’ve been following the Lobster Blog and my writings on the subject of lobster killing—for example, my cover story in Boston magazine last summer—then you know I am the first person to advocate the humane treatment and killing of lobsters. But it is always stunning to me that someone can have an ethical “revelation” while killing what is, essentially, an underwater bug, and then have that revelation lead them to the decision to eat only humanely certified, grass-fed beef.

To me this seems to have things backwards in several ways:

a) There is a straightforward, quick, and humane way to kill a lobster at home that doesn’t involve boiling the animal alive. I have written about this at length; the instructions are here, my article about the whole subject is here. Sure, it looks gruesome, but don’t confuse drama with ethics—kitchen knife to the thorax is the quickest and most painless way for the lobster to go. Every fish, bird, and animal you eat was once alive, and somebody had to kill it. (There is also an argument to be made that lobsters killed this way taste better; see a discussion on this with Chef Eric Ripert in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Online.)

b) Killing a lobster is traumatic? Try killing a cute, trusting young goat (which I have done), even humanely. That’s traumatic. Mammals are much closer to humans than a lobster. If you eat meat, lobster is one of the least complicated food choices you can make from an ethical standpoint—a Maine lobster is sustainably harvested and has a nervous system roughly equivalent to that of an insect. If you’ve ever killed a housefly or a mosquito, eating a lobster shouldn’t keep you up at night.

So how come lobsters freak people out? As I’ve said many times before, I think it’s because the lobster is the last animal we still see alive and kicking in our kitchen. To me, that’s not a cause for disgust. In this day and age, it’s a rare and valuable opportunity to remind ourselves that if we are going to eat meat at all, we need to face the fact that living creatures must die to feed us.

Can Lobsters Live Forever?

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:54:53 -0400

“I imagine you know folks who are in their 80s, maybe in their 90s, who are sharp, lively and very active,” said NPR science correspondent Robert Krulwich on the air recently. “But here's the thing—if you were a lobster, and especially if you were a very old lobster, all your colleagues, or almost all of them, would be sharp as tacks. Because, as best scientists can tell, lobsters age so gracefully they show no measurable signs of aging: no loss of appetite, no change in metabolism, no loss of reproductive urge or ability, no decline in strength or health.”

You can listen to Krulwich’s entertaining report on lobster aging here. Krulwich talks with lobster scientist Jelle Atema, one of the main characters in my book The Secret Life of Lobsters. The report includes an amusing musical score, with “Leroy the Lobster” singing the virtues of his glorious old age.

(Actually, in Krulwich’s report, “Leroy the Lobster” is sung by Josh Kurz, of the talented team Josh & Adam, who produce funny and edgy multimedia materials that educate about science; their motto is “Learning Through Osmosis.” Check out their videos.)

Monster Lobster on Little Cranberry

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:46:29 -0400

Here is lobsterman Bruce Fernald, the main character in my book The Secret Life of Lobsters, holding a lobster caught last week off Little Cranberry Island, where the book takes place. Bruce’s colleague on the island Steve Philbrook, a friend of mine, caught the 17.5-pound crustacean by accident. Far too big to fit inside a lobster trap, the critter was clinging to the outside of one of Steve’s traps when he hauled it up. Steve brought the lobster to the island for show-and-tell, and then released it back into the sea. All Maine lobstermen release oversize lobsters back to the ocean—part of their ethic of conservation, which I describe in the book.

This photo was taken by Bruce’s wife, Barb Fernald (who once worked as Bruce’s sternman aboard his boat). Naturally, in small-town coastal Maine a 17.5-pound lobster is big news. Barb’s photo ran on the front page of the local paper, the Mount Desert Islander.

Lobsters the World Over

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 09:43:16 -0400

If you’ve never visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, here’s what the lobster exhibit looks like—I was at the museum for a book signing last weekend and snapped this photo. Alongside the beautifully presented lobster shells, you can see a couple of gross-looking large lobsters squeezed into bottles of formaldehyde.

This is just a small sampling of the world’s lobsters. If you’ve read The Secret Life of Lobsters you may remember this passage:

“The oceans of the earth abound with lobsters. Lobsters with claws like hair combs sift mud in deep offshore trenches. Clawless lobsters with antennae like spikes migrate in clans in the Caribbean and the South Pacific. Flattened lobsters with heads like shovels scurry and burrow in the Mediterranean and the Galapagos. The eccentric diversity of the world’s lobsters has earned them some of the most whimsical names in the animal kingdom. There is a Hunchback Locust lobster and a Regal Slipper lobster. There are Marbled Mitten lobsters, Velvet Fan lobsters, and even a Musical Furry lobster. The Unicorn and Buffalo Blunthorn lobsters inspire admiration; the African Spear lobster, the Arabian Whip lobster, and the Rough Spanish lobster demand respect. Nowhere in the world, however, is the seafloor as densely populated with lobsters as in the Gulf of Maine.”

Tellingly, the lobsters in the American Museum of Natural History are positioned between the beetles and the spiders. Yes, they are basically underwater insects.

What Makes a Perfect Lobster Roll?

Thu, 7 Jun 2007 00:04:49 -0400

In an article on the Food & Wine website, the experts weigh in, including David Pulido, owner of the Portland Lobster Company in Maine, which says it makes 12,000 lobster rolls a year—and that’s just the tourist season.

Regarding mayonnaise: “This isn’t tuna fish,” says Pulido. “Less than five percent of our customers even think of putting mayo on the lobster roll. We serve it on the side.”

Crossword Puzzler

Mon, 28 May 2007 20:24:43 -0400

A gentleman named Miles recently wrote to me from Scotland, his tone desperate:

In the Guardian there was a question in a crossword that asked for a synonym of the word “lobster-catcher.” I missed the answer, and have never forgiven myself. Please help me avoid making my life’s quest one associated with lobster trivia and counter-empirical faith in lobster folklore. The clue word goes like this C???L.

Sadly for Miles, I had no clue, and I told him so. He wrote back a short time later:

This little poser had me flummoxed for a few days, I can tell you!

After a smidgeon of detective work I came across the bally answer purely by chance—visiting a small fishing village in Kent on a sunny spring weekend just passed. The word that had eluded me was emblazoned on a Bistro’s signage: King George’s Creel. Fate it seems has a sense of humour after all, and had led me to the end of my quest, and a damn fine meal. The holy grail or Da Vinci code maybe not—but Arthur Pendragon never sampled lobster quite so divine.

P.s. European lobsters are far harder than American layabout fairy lobsters.

Maine Lobsters Are Self-Centered

Wed, 23 May 2007 21:03:05 -0400

“Some people think we’re all about the lobster,” says a new advertisement from the Maine Office of Tourism. “Like the lobsters. Don’t feed their egos. Check out some of the other great things Maine has to offer.”

Yeah, come on, don’t feed their egos ... by eating them.

I mean, don’t you think eating them would pretty much solve the ego-feeding problem right there? “I’m a lobster, I’m so awesome, I’m so great, I rock, I—‘Rock Lobster’—had a song written about me, I—The Secret Life of Lobsters—had a book written about me, I ... Oh crap, I’m being cooked for dinner.”

Also, I have another question: Lobsters are people?

But by all means, if the lobster ego problem still bothers you, go to Maine and eat a moose.

Lobsters and Genocide

Thu, 10 May 2007 21:34:15 -0400

Why does a lobster going into a pot of boiling water elicit such a powerful reaction of horror from so many people? It’s a subject I’ve written about in depth, both on the Lobster Blog and, in particular, last summer in an article for Boston Magazine. I’ve been getting hate mail about that article from animal-rights activists ever since.

I was struck today, as I’m sure many people were, by a column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, which I’ve included below. He writes about the fact that we routinely turn a blind eye to the suffering of thousands or even millions of people, but we’ll go out on a limb to save a single individual—even when faced with a clear logical choice that we could do more good by helping the masses.

I don’t want to trivialize human suffering by jumping back to the subject of lobsters, but I was struck by a parallel. Many people seem to have no compunction about regularly eating hamburgers—causing large numbers of cows to die—but they can’t bear the thought of cooking a single lobster.

Along the lines of Kristof’s article, I’ve always thought this was partly because people see the lobster as a concrete individual, while the masses of cows remain abstract—despite the fact that the cows are much more like us humans than the lobster.

After reading Kristof’s article, I wondered if people’s feelings about lobsters (or puppies, or whatever) don’t have much to do with animals at all, but are simply a reflection of our psychology in relation to other humans—individuals vs. groups. Read the article and let me know what you think:

SAVE THE DARFUR PUPPY
by Nicholas Kristof
The New York Times
May 10, 2007

Finally, we're beginning to understand what it would take to galvanize
President Bush, other leaders and the American public to respond to the
genocide in Sudan: a suffering puppy with big eyes and floppy ears.

That's the implication of a series of studies by psychologists trying to
understand why people - good, conscientious people - aren't moved by
genocide or famines. Time and again, we've seen that the human
conscience just isn't pricked by mass suffering, while an individual
child (or puppy) in distress causes our hearts to flutter.

In one experiment, psychologists asked ordinary citizens to contribute
$5 to alleviate hunger abroad. In one version, the money would go to a
particular girl, Rokia, a 7-year-old in Mali; in another, to 21 million
hungry Africans; in a third, to Rokia - but she was presented as a
victim of a larger tapestry of global hunger.

Not surprisingly, people were less likely to give to anonymous millions
than to Rokia. But they were also less willing to give in the third
scenario, in which Rokia's suffering was presented as part of a broader
pattern.

Evidence is overwhelming that humans respond to the suffering of
individuals rather than groups. Think of the toddler Jessica McClure
falling down a well in 1987, or the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932
(which Mencken described as the "the biggest story since the
Resurrection").

Even the right animal evokes a similar sympathy. A dog stranded on a
ship aroused so much pity that $48,000 in private money was spent trying
to rescue it - and that was before the Coast Guard stepped in. And after
I began visiting Darfur in 2004, I was flummoxed by the public's passion
to save a red-tailed hawk, Pale Male, that had been evicted from his
nest on Fifth Avenue in New York City. A single homeless hawk aroused
more indignation than two million homeless Sudanese.

Advocates for the poor often note that 30,000 children die daily of the
consequences of poverty - presuming that this number will shock people
into action. But the opposite is true: the more victims, the less
compassion.

In one experiment, people in one group could donate to a $300,000 fund
for medical treatments that would save the life of one child - or, in
another group, the lives of eight children. People donated more than
twice as much money to help save one child as to help save eight.

Likewise, remember how people were asked to save Rokia from starvation?
A follow-up allowed students to donate to Rokia or to a hungry boy named
Moussa. Both Rokia and Moussa attracted donations in the same
proportions. Then another group was asked to donate to Rokia and Moussa
together. But donors felt less good about supporting two children, and
contributions dropped off.

"Our capacity to feel is limited," Paul Slovic of the University of
Oregon writes in a new journal article, "Psychic Numbing and Genocide,"
which discusses these experiments. Professor Slovic argues that we
cannot depend on the innate morality even of good people. Instead, he
believes, we need to develop legal or political mechanisms to force our
hands to confront genocide.

So, yes, we should develop early-warning systems for genocide, prepare
an African Union, U.N. and NATO rapid-response capability, and polish
the "responsibility to protect" as a legal basis to stop atrocities.
(The Genocide Intervention Network and the Enough project are working on
these things.)

But, frankly, after four years of watching the U.N. Security Council,
the International Criminal Court and the Genocide Convention accomplish
little in Darfur, I'm skeptical that either human rationality or
international law can achieve much unless backed by a public outcry.

One experiment underscored the limits of rationality. People prepared to
donate to the needy were first asked either to talk about babies (to
prime the emotions) or to perform math calculations (to prime their
rational side). Those who did math donated less.

So maybe what we need isn't better laws but more troubled consciences -
pricked, perhaps, by a Darfur puppy with big eyes and floppy ears. Once
we find such a soulful dog in peril, we should call ABC News. ABC's news
judgment can be assessed by the 11 minutes of evening news coverage it
gave to Darfur's genocide during all of last year - compared with 23
minutes for the false confession in the JonBenet Ramsey case.

If President Bush and the global public alike are unmoved by the
slaughter of hundreds of thousands of fellow humans, maybe our last,
best hope is that we can be galvanized by a puppy in distress.

Sidewalk Art

Tue, 8 May 2007 08:51:46 -0400

Artist Julian Beever draws “anamorphic” sidewalk art. (Anamorphosis: “a distorted projection or drawing that appears normal when viewed from a particular point.”)

I’m not sure “normal” is the appropriate term in reference to this 3D illusion he created of a lobster eating out of a dog-food-dish the size of a human being. Apparently, parents bring their babies and photograph them lying in the dish. Maybe that’s what happened to me when I was a baby, scarring me for life. Might explain my obsession with lobsters. Mom?

Here’s what the anamorphic lobster drawing looks like from the other side.

Gentleman Lobster

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:48:52 -0400

“Now this is my kind of guy,” writes Wendy Brinker, who sent me this picture of her favorite gentleman lobster.

I confess, it’s the first time I’ve seen a lobster in a smoking jacket, although readers of The Secret Life of Lobsters will recall the scene in which a female lobster is outfitted in a dress and high heels—borrowed from a Barbie doll.

Pretzel?

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:00:05 -0400

Thanks to Laura Lertdarapong for this picture of a lobster pretzel that she found in a friend’s photo album. Apparently, the lobster pretzel is trying to mate with the crocodile pretzel under it—at least that’s how I see it. I shudder to think what kind of gruesome beast that offspring would be. And what kind of sick pornographer takes pictures of bestial pretzel mating, anyway? Oh, right, I myself wrote a book that is basically crustacean porn ...

Lobster Pissing & Screwing

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:22:46 -0400

This week I gave a speech on lobsters to 300 teenagers at the 24th Annual Massachusetts High School Marine Science Symposium. Teenagers are always a tough crowd. And the talk was at 9 a.m., a tough time. To win them over, I knew I’d need to delve straight into the topics most likely to inspire these high school students to become accomplished marine biologists—lobster pissing and screwing.

Afterwards, one of the science teachers came up to me and said there’d been a student in the audience who suffered from the autistic disorder Asperger syndrome. This student had never been seen to laugh at anything. During my talk, the teacher reported, the student had been cracking up.

Made my day.

Your Lobster Stories

Tue, 6 Mar 2007 19:41:47 -0500

This page is a forum where you can share your own lobster story. Have you had an unusual, funny, or enlightening experience related to lobsters? Please click on “Add a comment” below and tell us about it.

I would request only that your story be a true and accurate reflection of what actually happened, and that you share your name and where you’re from.

(Have a sushi story? I’ve got a forum for those, too.)

Click Here for More Archived Posts

Thu, 1 Mar 2007 03:08:47 -0500

Blog entries prior to March 2007 on LOBSTERS.

ARCHIVE: Trevor’s blog posts on Lobsters