Word: lobsters
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...other delicacy from the sea seems to excite American palates as much as Homarus americanus, more familiarly known as the lobster. Americans consumed some 50 million lbs. last year, and recent OPEC-style price increases in the retail cost of lobsters (up 145% per Ib. since 1969) have not curbed the U.S. appetite for the clawed crustaceans. By 1985 the National Marine Fisheries Service projects nearly a doubling of demand, to about 90 million lbs. But where will these lobsters come from...
Marine biologists point out that lobsters are already being dangerously overfished. Off New England, lobster "pots" -the bait-loaded wooden traps used to snare the creatures-are so densely packed on the ocean floor that a lobster can barely move without bumping into one. Farther offshore, foreign fishermen have been using more sophisticated dredges to scoop up lobsters. In all too many cases, young females are removed before they have had a chance to reproduce; often they are taken under the typical state legal limit of 3 3/16 in. from eye socket to the beginning of the tail, a restraint...
...replenish the threatened supply, scientists have long dreamed of raising lobsters. But lobster culture has so far never passed the experimental stage. The obstacles are formidable. In the wild, it takes lobsters five to eight years to reach maturity. Even when the females begin laying eggs, only about one in every batch of 10,000 survives; the larvae fall prey to a host of natural predators. To complicate the job of would-be lobster farmers, the creatures must be kept apart: in captivity they show as much appetite for each other as humans do for them. Says Marine Biologist Douglas...
Conklin, 36, should know. As associate director of aquaculture at the University of California's Bodega Marine Laboratory, he has been involved in one of the more promising lobster-farming experiments to date. For seven years, marine biologists, chemists, geneticists and nutritionists, working in two small concrete blockhouses on the waterfront of Bodega Bay, a quiet fishing village about two hours' drive northwest of San Francisco, have been unraveling the puzzle of mass-producing lobsters...
Effluent from the stations would provide free hot water for an experimental factory that could produce 6,000 Ibs. of lobster a year at competitive prices...