A Star over Brooklyn

Regenerating Limbs

Ever since I hauled that lobster with the red gummi crusher claw, I’ve been troubled by the idea of a creature dropping appendages and growing them back. It’s actually been surprising to see how many lobsters we haul that are culls, with limp, red extremities in the process of becoming a bona fide claw or leg or antenna. Apparently, this is a nasty little sight that the commercial lobster industry spares the consumers.  So I’ll use this venue to show what doesn’t make it to market.

Red gummi appendages (both the crusher and antenna)

Regenerated claw cooked (but not eaten)

A cull with new regrowth

Pincer claw almost entirely restored to its original size

Just a wee tiny sprout

Strange crusher regeneration (or possibly mutation? doesn’t the crusher look like it’s facing outward?)

So, how do lobsters do this??  I have no idea.  But in lieu of an answer to that question, I’ll provide some interesting facts that I dug up while researching.

• The only parts of lobster that will regenerate are its claws, legs and antenna (i.e., it won’t grow a head back).
• In some case, if it gets stuck on a rock or entrapped in some way, a lobster will spontaneously drop a claw as a means of escaping danger. This is called “throwing” a claw.  Lobsters have preformed fracture planes where the limb can break easily without serious loss of blood.
• It takes 3-4 molt cycles to grow a claw back to regular size.
• Mature lobsters have something called “bilateral asymmetry“. In the early larval stages of development, the pair of claws are actually identical — they’re both slender and the muscles structures are similarly capable of fast movements. The crusher/pincer distinction isn’t determined until the juvenile stage, and it isn’t the result of genetic encoding, but determined instead by extrinsic factors. Generally, the side that experiences the most sensory input will develop into the  crusher claw, which has muscular fibers designed for slower movements.
• Scientists find that a juvenile lobster is just as likely to develop the crusher on the right side as on the left, explaining the 50:50 ratio in adults. Once the asymmetry is determined, it’s fixed for life, and all regenerated claws will mirror their predecessors.
• The regenerated limbs will actually be indistinguishable from the original, in structure, shape, function, and the make-up of muscular fibers.
• Removing the eye stalks of a lobster is a technique for accelerating growth and regeneration. Apparently, a hormone is present in the eye stalks that responds to seasonal and other indicators, such as temperature and nutrition, to inhibit or activate molting cycles accordingly. Without these hormones, lobsters will molt more frequently and increase in size more rapidly — they may experience 75-100% weight gain in a single molting cycle. While loss of eye stalks may boost growth initially over the course of one or two moltings, long-term survival rates are not good. The eye stalk hormones are involved in a wide range of important functions, from regeneration to digestion, and without them the lobsters become pale in color, uncoordinated, disproportionately sized, and very susceptible to environmental stresses.

That’s all I can ferret out for now. More to come. And send along good info if you have any!

Diagrams of Lobster Anatomy (including larva stage) available here.

More shots of regenerating culls available on Good Morning Gloucester‘s photostream.

Croakers for Bait

… Also, we exhausted our rotting pogie supply yesterday. It being Labor Day, all the bait shops down in the old port were closed, so we had to resort to the super market, making the assumption  (probably flawed) that what’s good enough for human consumption would be good enough for lobsters.

A. went with some inexpensive, nasty looking creature, aptly called a croaker.  Here we are contemplating the task of chopping it up into bait-bag sized pieces with a swiss army knife.

You can see, I’m not terribly pleased by the prospects. Let’s hope the lobsters won’t feel the same way.

Check out the Bait Log.

!! Guest Lobstress #2 / shell disease

Guest lobstress #2 — HELLO!

A.’s childhood friend was in town for the weekend and came out with us for an afternoon of lobstering. Not a bad haul, actually.  Our second berried female of the season. Very berried indeed.  This hen was already notched, so we were spared the excitement of snipping the back flipper this time around.

K. got cozy with a baby short, featured here, but eventually opted to release it.

And what else?  … Oh yes! Very interesting — we hauled a lobster with some kind of degenerative shell disease.  Apparently, it’s an infection caused by a range of different bacteria and fungi that results in the gradual erosion of the lobster’s exoskeleton. The infection leads to soft, irregular lesions in the shell, seen here on the lobster we found as red and purple speckled sores (below).

The infection can spread to the gills and parts of the shell preventing a lobster from being able to successfully  molt. This is one of the ways the shell disease can cause mortality.

According to NOAA, interestingly, the degenerative shell disease is not all that common in the wild. It’s more prevalent — not to mention economically destructive — in lobster pounds, where conditions may be ripe for the harmful bacteria to grow.

Somewhat disturbing is the fact that the shell disease is observed in degraded coastal habitats, where the lobsters come in contact with contaminated sediment while roaming the sea floor. AND the infection has been generated in the laboratory environment by exposing healthy lobsters to sewage sludge. Ughly.

This is NOT encouraging at all. Especially in light of the recent nytimes series on the nation’s water quality, “Toxic Waters”.  They’ve pulled together data from the EPA into an interactive graphic that covers all parts of the US. You can zoom into Casco Bay, and it identifies multiple polluters in the immediate vicinity of our lobstering range that have failed to comply with the Clean Water Act at some point over the course in the last three years.

Below I’ve inserted a still shot of our home turf from the nytimes feature.

The orange dots represent facilities with one or more violations. Of those stamped with violations is our friendly neighborhood waste water treatment plant on the East End directly west of the boat launch. Another is the Portland city sewage treatment facility out on Peaks Island.

DEElicious. Needless to say, the one with the funky chitin we tossed back.

See a more detailed map of our trap locations here.

!! Guest Lobstress #1

Yesterday, we were honored to have an old friend and guest lobsteress with us: one Ms. T. of Los Angeles, California. (applause)

The catch unfortunately failed to match our enthusiasm.  The turn out was neither impressive nor abundant for our budding young lobster woman. Nonetheless T. demonstrated undeniable vigor and passion as she put hand over hand to haul up our traps while we drank beer. Here’s a video clip of T. in action [coming soon].

I think yesterday might have been a life changer for T. What with getting splattered by mud and rotting bait blood, then drenched with 50 degree ocean spray as the sun went down and the air chilled up. What do you say T.? Any plans to move to Maine yet?

While no keepers to speak of, our haul included a total of 15 crabs, 1 rock eel, and 5 short lobsters.

From One Lobsterman to Another: A Haunting Message

Oh, we read you LOUD and CLEAR.

In light of the recent flurry of reports about scuffles among area lobstermen, A.’s not willing to take any chances with his few remaining traps.

Episodes of violence among lobsterman have been especially intense this year. Record low market prices (lobsters were selling wholesale for $2.25-3.00 per pound, last I heard) for the second year in a row have put enormous strain on the traditional fishing industry. Violence came to a head recently in the well-publicized story of  Matinicus Island. This remote island 20 miles off the mainland with a year-round population of 51, according to the 2000 census, has some of the richest lobstering fields in the world. Tensions over turf rights on the island escalated to gunplay earlier this summer in July. Sixty-eight year old Vance Bunker shot Chris Young, 41,  in the neck — somehow managing not to mortally wound him.

The implicit code of territorial rights among lobsterman is no joke. Local fishing families do not hesitate to protect their turf, whether by cutting lines or even sinking the boats of competitors, as recently happened in another unrelated incident in the Mid-coast region. A more common practice is to send signals to the encroacher, signals such as leaving bottles in the traps or tying a knot in the buoy line.

Here’s a clip of A. last Friday deciphering the code:

A. has cause for concern and he’s not going to take any chances embroiling himself in a turf war.

More Sea Squirt Madness

There have been a lot of sea squirts on traps recently. Here’s one being encouraged to perform the pissing routine:

….. hahaaaa….  oh man. shiv cracks me UP