Scuba Diving club,
Southern California
Lobsters Facts
1. Do you know that lobster blood is colorless. When exposed to oxygen, it develops a bluish color.
2.
What
is "tomalley"?Tomalley is the
lobster's liver. It turns green when cooked and is considered a delicacy.
3.
What
is the coral colored material often seen in a cooked lobster? Coral
is the egg mass of a female lobster. Cooking colors the tiny eggs a deep coral
or red.
4.
How does a lobster grow? Lobsters grow by molting. This is the
process in which they struggle out of their old shells while simultaneously
absorbing water which expands their body size. This molting, or shell-shedding,
occurs about 25 times in the first 5-7 years of life. Following this cycle, the
lobster will weigh approximately one pound and reach minimum legal size.
5.
A lobster at minimum
legal size may only molt once per year and increase about 15% in length and 40%
in weight.
6.
No one has yet found a
way to determine the exact age of a lobster. However, based on scientific
knowledge of body size at age, the maximum age attained may approach 100 years.
They can grow to be 3 feet or more in overall body length.
7.
After molting, lobsters
will eat voraciously, often devouring their own recently vacated shells. This
replenishment of lost calcium hastens the hardening of the new shell which takes
about 14-30 days from the actual loss of the old shell.
8.
How
old is a one-pound lobster? No one knows exactly, but
aquarium studies suggest 5 to 7 years.
9.
How many one-pound
lobsters are needed for a pound of lobster meat? Five,
on the average.
10. How long can a lobster live
out of water? Several days if kept in a cool, moist environment. The
lobster is a gill-breather, and moisture is essential to survival.
11. Can a lobster be kept alive in fresh water with ice? No. Fresh water is lethal to a lobster.
The animal has salty blood and tissue, which require a seawater nvironment if
life is to be maintained.
12. Why does a lobster turn red
when cooked? The red pigment is the most stable component of the
coloring in a lobster shell. The greens and browns which darken the shell in a
live lobster are destroyed by cooking.
13. The nervous system of a lobster is decentralized and
has been likened to that of a grasshopper
14. Among other things, lobsters eat crabs, sea stars, sea
urchins. They are not by nature cannibalistic, except when held in crowded
conditions (traps, pounds, etc.). Even with banded claws, it's still not
unusual to find partially eaten animals in the live-tank when it's emptied.
15. Lobster larva will molt about six times while still in
the egg. After they are released from the mother's swimmerettes and hatch, the
larva will float freely in the water column and molt several more times before
taking the form that we recognize as a lobster. At this point they may be only
1/4" in length.
16. Lobsters can regenerate legs, claws, and antennae. In
fact they can amputate their own claws and legs (autotomy) to escape danger.
The term 'amputate' can be in the passive sense as well. I've seen a lobster
spontaneously drop a claw for no apparent reason.
17. Are Lobsters part of the insect family? Close! This
group is known as the arthropods. Insects, spiders (arachnids),
centipedes/millipedes, and shrimp, lobster, and crabs (crustaceans) are all
arthropods hence, we call lobsters bugs.
18. How does a lobster breathe? It takes in water through its legs, lets it out through its head.
19. What's the best way to store a cooked lobster, shelled
or unshelled? It is best to store the meat in the shell to keep it from drying
out.
20. What is the frequency of blue lobsters? Are there any
photos? The blue lobster is very, very rare. Marine scientists believe a
genetic condition causes the blue pigmentation, seen in only about one in
2,000,000 lobsters.
21. How old can a Lobster live to be? Based on the descriptions of large Lobsters
seen by fishermen during Colonial times, Lobsters of that period sometimes
lived to be (approximately) 150 years old. Not surprisingly, when the Lobster
industry began during the 1800's, the life expectancy of Lobsters decreased.
The scientific community also waited until the 1800's before they took an
interest in Lobsters. Therefore, the oldest Lobster on record lived to be 100
years old, and weighed about 43 pounds.
Back in the 1600’s
when indentured servants where brought to this country, they would stipulate
that they were not to be fed lobster more than 3 times a week. Back then lobster was very common
|
So you want to save the Lobster
Molt Of course if
you found a nice molt from a 12 pound lobster you would never tell your
friends it was a molt. The real one
you never even saw. A nice molt is
the best to work with, or if you have a good empty one ... |
22. and without refrigeration to make transporting
possible it stayed in the northeast. It
was so common that it was used as a fertilizer for gardens.
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Young Lobsters |
Habitat: Spiny lobsters typically
are found in caves and crevices of rocky reefs.
Average adult size: Adults can grow to be more than 2 feet long.
Natural history: Spiny lobsters, like all
crustaceans, live inside a hard, outer shell or exoskeleton. This shell offers
great protection from predators. Lobsters are shy and often gather in caves or
crevices during the day. But they become active at night, leaving their
shelters to roam the reef to feed. The California Spiny Lobster lacks the large
claws of the Atlantic lobster. It more than makes up for that shortcoming by
having a shell covered with sharp spines and long antennae. Spiny lobsters must
shed their exoskeleton to grow, by a process called molting (just like a snake
has to shed its skin.) The lobster splits the old shell in half where the main
body meets the tail, and crawls out; leaving behind the molted shell in such
perfect condition it can easily be mistaken for a live animal. Spiny lobsters
molt several times a year as juveniles, once a year as adults. Lobsters are active
predators on worms, snails and mussels. They are preyed upon by octopuses,
large fishes and especially people. Lobsters have interesting eyes, carried at
the end of a movable stalk like the periscope of a submarine. Their eyes are
compound, like the eyes of a bee, divided into many facets. The lobster sees a
mosaic of many images. Each image is not as sharp as what we see, but the
combination enables the lobster to detect movement especially well. The largest
spiny lobster weighed more than 26 pounds and was 3 feet long. Spiny lobsters
may live to be about 25 to 50 years old.
Range: From San Luis Obispo, California,
south to Rosalia Bay, Baja, California
Information
on the Spiny Lobster was obtained from the following web site
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Posted October 13, 2003