Image courtesy of The Island Institute
The Lobster Life-Cycle

Conservation Organizations

The Lobster Conservancy - Also known as TLC, this is a great organization dedicated to education, research and helping sustain a healthy lobserting industry. Based out of Friendship, Maine.

AVC Lobster Science Centre - This is a Canadian-based organization studying problems caused in lobster populations by pathogens and infectious diseases.

NY/CT Sea Grant - This is a great site containing information about research being done on lobster populations in Long Island Sound.

New England Aquarium - The aquarium has a rearing and research center that studies lobsters, as well as provides lobsters for others to study.

Fun Links!!

Gulf of Maine Aquarium - A site packed with information, history, and fun facts.

The Lobster Cam - This site is no longer updated, but remains up with pictures and a video from the inside of a lobster trap!

Image courtesy of Random Thoughts

Maine, until a few years ago, was the only license plate with a dead animal on it. So many people complained that the cooked lobster was too hard to see that the plate was replaced with that of a chickadee, the state bird.

Image courtesy of the New England Aquarium

Photo courtesy of Northeast Fisheries Science Center

Introduction

What's With the Colors?
Anyone familiar with the American lobster (lobstah to those of us from Maine) is probably looking at the picture to the right thinking "why in the world would anyone spray-paint a lobster?" These lobsters are neither the normal blue-green color, nor do they fit the red hue that appears on boiled lobsters. But don't worry, no one has taken their artistic vision out on these unusual organisms. The protein, called astaxanthin, in the exoskeleton of these little fellows has a large subunit that changes color when the shape is altered (Imperial College, 2002). These lobsters are from the Marine Resources Aquarium in Maine.

Where to Look:
American lobsters (Homarus americanus) are found in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of North American. Their tag as "Maine lobsters" is incorrect, though the lobstering industry in Maine is one of the most well-known. American lobsters actually range from Newfoundland to North Carolina, as shown below. Post-larval lobsters can be found in shallow waters; research is now under way to determine why adult lobsters prefer certain areas to others, such as Penobscot Bay off the coast of Maine (Island Institute, 2001).

This image modified from The Lobster Conservancy.

The Life of a Lobster:
Lobsters begin life in the larval stage. The reproductive cycle of a female lobster lasts for approximately two years. She carries the eggs on the underside of her tail, and after fertalized carries them for 9 to 12 months at which point they hatch into the larval stage and are released. Lobsters have exoskeletons (shells) that provide both structural support and protection. As they grow from the larval stage into the juvenile state they must molt, or shed, old shells and grow new ones to accomidate their increase in size (New England Aquarium, 2003).

What's for Dinner?
Lobsters are mostly carnivorous, their diet including such animals as mussles, crabs, starfish, and even other lobsters (Maine Lobster Promotion Council, 2001). This explains the need for banding of the claws, as shown in the picture at the top left. It also creates a large problem with attempting to raise lobsters in captivity. Humans are the main preditors of lobsters today. In part because of this, raising lobsters in captivity is a project of great economic interest . Unfortunitely, due to the area and resources needed to raise lobsters to adult size are so costly that at this point it is not commercially viable (Lavalli, Cowan, and Barshaw, 1998).

Conservation Status

American Lobsters are not listed on four of the major lists for threatened or endangered species. These lists include the United States Endangered Species Act, the United States Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the IUCN list, and the CITES list.

Conservation Issues

Lobsters are both lucky and unlucky enough to be considered as very good meals by many people. They are unlucky in that when people like to eat, or for other reasons kill organisms we have a history of depleting the population to the point of extinction (for example the Dodo). On the other hand, lobsters are in a very lucky position. A great industry has existed around lobstering since the mid-1800's (Maine Lobster Promotion Council, 2001). It's such a tradition that some of the most adament supporters of being cautious of over-fishing, and funding research on problems occuring within lobster populations are lobstermen/women themselves.

Despite the fact that lobsters are not endangered, there are still questions about how they are going to fare in the future. Relatives of the American Lobsters, Homarus gammarus, that live on the other side of the Atlantic along the coast of Europe and down into Africa, have been over-harvested in the past. It is only now that they are being restocked by the introduction of young lobsters raised in captivity (Lavalli, Cowan, and Barshaw, 1998). The US Federal Government has labeled the American lobster population as "overfished," but the general increase in abundance, coupled with the increase in catches over the past twenty years brings into question the posibility that lobsters are being overfished (Fish Research.Org, 2002).

It appears as though the problems that are currently concerning scientists, and lobstermen, surround populations in specific areas. In Long Island Sound there have been abnormally large lobster die-offs caused at least in part by diseases since 1999. Scientists are exploring multiple avenues in order to discover the origins of these unusually large die-offs. Some include bacterial infections that cause the break-down of the exoskeleton, a parasite that attacks the nervous system, as well as higher than normal water temperatures (Patten and French, 2003).

Literature Cited

Fish Research.Org. 2002. American lobster: setting research agenda. http://www.fishresearch.org/Articles/2001/08/research_agenda.asp. (3 April 2003).

Imperial College, London. 29 July 2002. Imperial college London - UK scientists crack lobster shell colour puzzel. http://www.ic.ac.uk/P3540.htm. (2 April 2003).

Island Institute. 2001. Penobscot Bay Collaborative Research Projects.http://www.penbay.net/. (6 March 2003).

Lavalli, Kari L., Diane F. Cowan, and Diana Barshaw. Lobster Biology, Future Prospects. http://www.swt.edu/%7est04/tlc/biology11.html (3 April 2003).

Maine Department of Marine Resources. No Date. Aquarium - Maine marine resources. http://www.maine.gov/dmr/rm/aquarium/index.html. (3 April 2003).

Maine Lobster Promotion Council. 2001. FAQ about lobster. http://www.mainelobsterpromo.com/faq.html. (2 April 2003).

New England Aquarium. 2003. Research groups at NEAq. http://www.neaq.org/scilearn/research/lobster.html. (3 April 2003).

NY/CT Long Island Sound Lobster Initiative. 2 April 2003. NY-CTSG: LI sound lobster initiative. http://www.seagrant.sunysb.edu/LILobsters/default.htm (April 3 2003).

Patten, Peg Van, and Richard A. French. January 2003. What's happening to lobsters in Long Island Sound? http://www.seagrant.sunysb.edu/LILobsters/Research-Calcinosis1202.pdf (3 April 2003).

The Lobster Conservancy. 2003. The Lobster Conservancy. http://www.lobsters.org/. (6 March 2003).

New York Sea Grant Institution. 2 April, 2003. Surf's up with New York Sea Grant on the WWWeb! http://www.seagrant.sunysb.edu/. (3 April 2003).

Photo courtesy of Media Archive

Author: Rachel Houtman
Revision date: 4 April 2003