….. Rules rules rules…..
In order to prevent people from fishing all the baby lobsters out of the sea, there are rules about what size lobsters you can keep. Lobsters that you can legally harvest must have a carapace (or back shell) that’s longer than 3.25 inches, but not longer than 5 inches. I guess we want to save the young ones and the old ones too.
Here’s a picture of A. measuring the largest lobster we caught today. You measure from behind the eye socket to the start of the tail. This one is just about at legal size.
A lobster with a 3.25 inch carapace is estimated to be 5-7 years old.
I heard once that there is no biologically intrinsic limit to a lobster’s size or age,
and that if left to it’s own devices, with no adverse external factors — like environmental circumstances, predators, scarce food, whatever — a lobster will continue to grow and grow and grow.
It’s actually difficult to judge their exact age, because a lobster molts, and it shed its skin so frequently that the shell has completely regenerated after a few years. Each pound that a lobster weighs is thought to count for 7-9 years. So a 20 pound lobster could be well over 100 years old.
Here’s a clip of A. measuring the carapace.
We argued a little about whether or not this one was legal. It would have been the only (and first) legal sized one we’d caught.
the haulress
the long hauler
