I know it's been a long time since I've updated the Lobster Blog. Some of you have written to say you've missed the blog, which I really appreciate.

Even without regular updating, in February the Lobster Blog received a maelstrom of hits when the popular blog BoingBoing linked to my blog entry on the new lobster killing machines being used by Whole Foods Market. On the day of BoingBoing's post, visitor traffic to this website went from a steady average of 150 hits a day to over 47,000 hits. Boing.

The reason I haven't been updating the Lobster Blog is that I've been completely consumed by the task of finishing a new book. I'm very excited about it. It's called The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket. The new book goes on sale May 29, and I'll be traveling around the country to promote it.

I've set up a new website, TrevorCorson.com, that will feature the new book and that will be my new home on the web. If you liked The Secret Life of Lobsters, I think you'll enjoy reading The Zen of Fish as well. Check it out.

In conjunction with TrevorCorson.com I've set up two blogs. One of them, of course, is a new Sushi Blog. The other is a new Lobster Blog, which will function as a continuation of this blog. Both of the new blogs have full-fledged comments and search functions, so I hope you'll weigh in and help make it an entertaining conversation. (This Lobster Blog, the original, will remain on the web as an archive.)

I look forward to hearing from you on the new sites! Thanks for your interest.

Best,
Trevor

This photo by Julie Coulter of her cat clad in a furry lobster shawl became famous today when John Hodgman -- author of The Areas of My Expertise and the guy who plays the "PC" character in the Apple TV ads -- posted it to his website. I couldn't resist posting it myself.

Hodgman has a thing, by the way, for the furry lobster. Apparently, the existence of a "furry lobster" was one of the "facts" he invented for his book, only to have a real furry lobster discovered after the book was published. As I always say, fact is stranger fiction -- that's why I write true stories.

Anybody made a lobster Jack-O-Lantern? Send me a picture.

Actress Glenn Close was recently spotted reading THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS on a JetBlue flight from Portland, Maine to New York City.

I could make a bad joke -- boiled rabbit with your boiled lobster, anyone? -- but I won't.

Oops, I did.

Dear Glenn, I'm honored. Hope you like the book.

Comments? E-mail me.

Talk about an identity crisis!

This from the AP Newswire, July 14, 2006:

BAR HARBOR, Maine - An eastern Maine lobsterman caught a lobster this week that looks like it's half-cooked. . . .

Staff at the Mount Desert Oceanarium say the odds of finding a half-and-half lobster are 1 in 50 million to 100 million. By comparison, the odds of finding a blue lobster are about 1 in a million.

Bette Spurling, who works at the oceanarium, said lobster shells are usually a blend of the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. Those colors mix to form the greenish-brown color of most lobsters. This lobster, though, has no blue in half of its shell, she said.

Comments? E-mail me.

Comments (1):

- In reference to the half-baked lobster, I just want to say how important the Mount Desert Oceanarium in Bar Harbor was in turning me on to our oceans and ocean creatures long, long ago. I vividly remember childhood trips there, playing with sea cucumbers in the tidal pool tank, learning about lobsters, seeing giant baleen combs on the wall . . . My love of ocean life likely started with frequent visits to the oceanarium as a young kid. Everyone should take a trip there if it's feasible, and parents should definitely get their kids there.

After the hate mail I've received lately from militant vegans in response to my article in Boston magazine about cooking lobsters, this e-mail from a gentleman named Paul was refreshing:

From reading your Lobster FAQ's, I have learnt that when lobsters "squeal" in boiling water, the high-pitched noise is actually the steam escaping from its body cavities. I have thought of an idea. Would different sized lobsters produce different tonations of "squeal"? If so, it may be possible to create a "lobster piano" in which lobsters of different size are released into the hot water with such timing that a tune would be played. Has one of these ever been made?

God bless you, Paul, you made my day. I don't know, but I sure as heck hope you make one and send us the recording.

Comments? E-mail me.

Michael Ruhlman, a food writer I admire, launched an eloquent volley questioning the extremes of animal-rights activism on the food blog Megnut. He writes:

What is going on here? Lobsters are insects! . . . The real victims are the agribusiness chickens, cows and hogs, but the animal rights activists can't touch the culprits responsible, true goliaths. So instead The People try to save the little animals.

Ruhlman called on celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain to use his influence to combat these absurdities.

Ruhlman's rant generated a lot of discussion. Bourdain himself even weighed in. Bourdain wrote:

The fucktards at Whole Foods . . . have done us a real service by providing the most ludicrous example of "animal welfare" concerns with their public hand wringing over the fate of shellfish. Comedy Gold. . . . Extraordinary that in a time when hundreds of thousands of PEOPLE are starving to death in the Sudan and elsewhere, that there is no more burning issue on the minds of educated, well-fed, financially comfortable citizens than whether or not a clam [or lobster] feels pain. PETA . . . will of course do nothing that impacts America's bottomless hunger for fried, battery raised chickens -- and will continue to concentrate on "winnable" battles . . .

. . . like lobster.

As always, it was entertaining to hear from Bourdain, who has no compunction about killing or eating just about anything.

Especially lobsters. A few years ago, Bourdain published a short story -- no doubt based on his real-life experiences -- that began with a priceless meditation on lobster killing.

The story was called "Chef's Night Out," and it begins with the narrator in a foul mood:

I've gotten a little fragile since the lobsters started looking at me funny. . . . Understand; I've been killing lobsters for like, 22 years now. I've boiled them alive. Steamed them to death. I've torn them in half, chopped them into wriggling chunks for fricassee, for Lobster Americaine. Early in my career, when I worked at one of those seaside tourist traps, you could pick your victim out of a 55-gallon tank on your way in and I'd kill him to order, have him delivered to your table steamed, broiled, stuffed, or baked -- your choice.

I killed them in dozens, stacked their struggling bodies in heaps, five-deep in the heavy stainless steel and wrought-iron steamer, slammed the double doors shut, turned the wheel, and gave them the steam. I racked up, in one year, a body count that would have been the envy of a company-sized unit of angry Serbs. I was the Pol Pot of Lobsterdom, and you could smell the brackish cloud from the stacks of the dead blocks away from my kitchen. The drains clogged with the milky white albumen which bubbled out from inside their shells -- it clung to my shoes, stained my clothes, collected under my fingernails.

And I didn't mind at all. Not one little bit.

One of my early chefs, an affable Frenchman with a drinking problem, explained why one must section the hapless creatures while still alive for Lobster Americaine. "The meat," he said, "she become tough."

I said, "Oui, chef!" with no thought of my victims' pain, or of some Lobster Nuremberg in the future.

Other chefs I knew complained of bad dreams.

"I dream I'm in a sauna," said one, "and I look out the door through the little window? And there's a big motherfuckin' lobster and he's, like, turning up the heat, man. His antennae are twitching, and he's making all sortsa godawful screechin' sounds. There's a whole buncha his friends, they clappin' their claws together as he gives me the steam. Then, when I'm all pink and red and shit, they take me out and split me up the middle and cram hunksa crabmeat and bay scallops in my chest, and I'm flopping around and screaming on the cutting board. Payback . . ." shuddered my friend, "payback is a motherfucker." . . .

Comments? E-mail me.

Okay, I'm definitely beating a dead lobster now . . . but my cover story in Boston magazine on Whole Foods' decision to ban live lobster has been getting some press (it's now on newsstands, in the July issue) -- and I want to sum up my additional thoughts since it was published. Here are my top-five reasons why the decision by Whole Foods to ban live lobsters runs counter to the philosophy of Whole Foods:

1. We lose the last living connection we had to animals as food, which reminded us of where our dinner comes from.

2. The lobsters will now die inside a massive, automated crushing machine in an anonymous factory. While probably more humane than boiling them alive, it's not more humane than pithing them in your kitchen prior to cooking, and we lose our personal recognition of them as living creatures whose deaths sustain and enliven us.

3. Whole Foods will now get all its lobsters from one corporatized operation in Canada, which catches lobsters with its own corporatized factory boats. Whole Foods is turning its back on the independent, small-scale, owner-operator lobstermen of Maine, who have a strong tradition of conservation and stewardship, and whose communities constitute one of the last significant fisheries that has yet to be consolidated into an impersonal industrialized system.

4. The Canadian corporate boats catch and keep large broodstock lobsters -- the mother and father lobsters. The lobstermen of Maine return these lobsters to the sea to help repopulate the lobster population, and have fought long and hard to convince other lobster-fishing regions to protect these broodstock lobsters as well. Unless Whole Foods exerts pressure on the Canadian operations to institute broodstock protections, Whole Foods will be party to the gradual decimation of the big lobsters that make the babies that keep the fishery going.

5. The development of a vast new market for processed, packaged lobster meat could, in the long run, exert the same kind of demand-driven pressures on the lobster fishery that have contributed to the destruction, from overfishing, of other marine species.

The conclusion? Whole Foods should be applauded for taking animal welfare seriously, but this decision seems to have been less about ethics than economics. Whole Foods can sell far more processed lobster meat than they could ever sell in the way of live lobsters, and at much less expense.

P.S. Whole Foods could rectify problems 3 & 4 by buying its processed lobster meat from a supplier in Maine, like Shucks Maine Lobster, instead of from Clearwater Seafoods.

Comments? E-mail me.

Lobster cooking continues -- the old-fashioned way -- at this summer's annual Fourth of July picnic on Little Cranberry Island, where THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS took place.

A few days ago, a person named Antoine wrote to me with his reaction to my article in Boston magazine on the life and death of lobsters:

Lobsters are highly intelligent creatures. Do you seriously think that they are "happy" in tanks in a grocery store? Are you that deluded? Lobsters can live up to 100 years. As well, lobsters mate and mourn just like we do. . . . It seems that your entire reason for being stems from a speciesist attitude based on lies and misinformation.

I pointed out to Antoine that there was no evidence that lobsters experience emotions such as happiness or mourning. The lobster's nervous system is on par with that of a housefly or mosquito; there is no brain, just a connected series of ganglia composed of a total of around 300,000 neurons. By contrast, human brains have a hundred billion neurons, and that's not including the rest of our nervous system. Are lobsters intelligent? While writing THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS I was amazed at what lobsters are capable of, but I also came to understand that their behaviors are the result of a primitive, hard-wired neural circuitry.

Antoine's response was essentially to say that it didn't matter. Ethics, in his view, required that a lobster receive the same level of compassion as any human, no matter what. He went on to argue that:

Who the act is committed upon is not relevant when discussing ethics. Although many would feel justified in killing the Hitlers and Idi Amins of this world, there is no argument as to the ethics of such an action.

Certainly, Antoine is entitled to his own understanding of ethics. But his beef with me was that I called myself an ethical eater. Antoine demanded that I stop doing so, because in his view, the fact that I ate lobster at all -- even humanely killed lobster -- proved that I had no ethics at all.

My beef with people who have views like Antoine's, as I've written before on my blog, is that:

their obsession with saving lobsters from the pot is a costly misallocation of moral concern, especially when there is so much that is good about eating lobster, including the fact that for the most part, lobster is one of the world's few sustainably harvested seafoods. And if there's one thing I've learned about lobsters, it's that they are not sentient creatures in the sense that cows and pigs are (FYI, I don't eat much pork, beef, or chicken, and when I do, I try to stick to the free-range varieties).

I also wonder what will remain for Antoine to eat after he reads The Secret Life of Plants, which argues that plants possess consciousness not unlike animals.

Comments? E-mail me.

Comments (4):

- I don't feel any of this guy's opinion is worth the time of day. Debases your site. Just gives the guy fuel, ammunition, power, etc.

- What's funny about ethics is that they are inherently subjective (to me, anyway). I'll go to great lengths to remove a spider from the house, unharmed, but squash mosquitoes with relish. I think Antoine has a point -- where do we draw ethical lines, and who gets to draw them? And should ethics be relative, or fixed? But when it comes to food and eating, there are simple, practical realities. We've gotta eat something. And the less removed from our food choices, the better, I agree. The science nerd in me can understand that lobsters' simple or "primitive" nervous systems probably don't provide the biological equipment for emotions and higher consciousness. But the mystical nerd in me feels that we can't really know the consciousness of other beings. Do lobsters feel? Who knows. But everything we eat that once was a living thing may have had some kind of consciousness. The solution, to me, is to be thankful for the food that living things provide for us, and remember that we're just part of the big picture of creatures eating and being eaten, and that actually connects us to the web of life in very real and satisfying ways. Otherwise, I might end up being a Fruitarian, eating only fruits that have naturally fallen from plants!

- When are you going to wake up and stop fooling yourself? Since when did killing animals become humane or ethical? Any damn way you kill a lobster it still renders you a murderer. Anybody with a conscience knows that. So start understanding the fact that maybe you should develop your conscience. God bless you.

- What is the fixation these people have with lobsters? Do they not know how hostile the world is under the sea? Do they not know how many clams are crushed and eaten by lobsters every summer? Do they not know how lobsters are savagely killed and devoured by the millions during their molting period by bluefish? Do they not know how savagely the bluefish are ripped apart by the migrating bluefin tuna? Shouldn't they be protecting the clams from the bad lobster? If they say lobsters are intelligent creatures then they should get them to stop crushing things in their claws, because that must also be a cruel thing to do. I think dropping a lobster in a pot of boiling water to put nutritious food on the table is far less cruel than what its demise would have been on the bottom of the ocean. These people are becoming so sensitive about what we eat that I think they must have to be living on artificial foods to not be hypocrites, right? They better be.

In the New York Times on Sunday, food critic Frank Bruni wrote an article titled "It Died for Us," in which he argued that the decision by Whole Foods to discontinue the sale of live lobster dovetailed with a heightened awareness about where our food comes from and whether it was produced humanely -- a subject he went on to discuss in relation to a variety of animals.

The illustration accompanying the article showed a red lobster in a coffin with flowers, labeled "100% Humanely Killed Fresh Maine Lobster."

The illustration was amusing. But the picture -- and the article -- made an assumption: The lobsters that will be processed for Whole Foods in the future will be killed humanely, and they will come from Maine.

I made similar assumptions in my own article on the Whole Foods decision in the July issue of Boston magazine, which went to press in mid-June and which is just now hitting newsstands.

But since then, what has struck me is how none of the journalists who have written about the Whole Foods lobster ban -- including myself, at least until the past week or so -- have probed far enough behind the Whole Foods corporate press release.

To my knowledge, the stories on the lobster ban in the mainstream press have not questioned the official Whole Foods position that the lobsters will be harvested in a sustainable fashion and killed humanely. And now the news cycle has already moved on. I doubt any major media outlet will be revisiting the story.

I decided to write a letter to the New York Times to challenge our assumptions. The letter was published in today's paper, along with some other letters on the subject. Here is the full letter I sent; unfortunately, the Times only published the second paragraph.

To the Editor:

Whole Foods "humanely killed" lobsters won't be coming from Maine. Maine's several thousand small-scale independent harvesters protect the oversized broodstock (mother and father) lobsters that help repopulate the fishery. But Whole Foods will be selling only processed lobster meat from Clearwater Seafoods of Canada, which operates large-scale corporate boats that do not protect oversized broodstock lobsters.

The lobsters prepared for Whole Foods will die inside enormous automated crushing machines. The lobsters are loaded alive into a cylinder and the water around them is compressed to several times the pressure found in the deepest trenches of the ocean. Tests by animal-welfare experts are underway, but it is not yet clear how long the lobsters suffer inside these high-pressure processors before they die; attaining maximum pressure requires 30-45 seconds. While perhaps more humane than boiling alive, it is certainly not more humane than pithing a lobster with a kitchen knife before you put it in the pot.

Trevor Corson
Washington D.C.
The writer is the author of a book on lobster biology.

I must add, folks: I find it extremely ironic that I have ended up sounding a lot like PeTA and David Foster Wallace. Don't worry -- I still believe in splitting lobsters in half with a kitchen knife, cooking them, and eating them.

Comments? E-mail me.

In my article in Boston magazine on the "lobster war" -- about the ways that animal-rights activists and Whole Foods executives are putting live lobster on trial -- I describe how lobster processing, distribution, and retail sale will be revolutionized by technology.

To recap: in the name of treating lobsters humanely, Whole Foods has discontinued the sale of live lobsters. Instead, the gourmet food chain will sell processed lobster meat. That, of course, begs the question: what technology will be used to kill and process these lobsters behind the scenes? Will it be humane?

Here are the new death machines.

First, the CrustaStun.

It was designed and built in the UK in response to tightening animal-welfare laws intended to protect crustaceans from torture.

It zaps the lobsters with a jolt of electricity, rendering their nervous systems dysfunctional prior to cooking.

There is a "continuous flow" model, with a conveyor belt, to be used for industrial applications. There is also a small, individualized lobster killer for zapping one animal at a time. Got space on your kitchen counter, between the blender and coffee maker?

The CrustaStun has already received some press in a few newspapers and on a few websites. As gruesome as it sounds, the CrustaStun has received a humane stamp of approval.

But the lobsters processed for Whole Foods will not have the luxury of electrocution.

In fact, no one seems to have noticed the much bigger machine that has already started revolutionizing lobster processing -- the Avure HPP. Yet it is this extraordinary piece of technology that will be used to provide lobster meat for Whole Foods.

These enormous devices, built by Avure Technologies, are called hydrostatic pressure processing (HPP) systems. They come in several models. The entrepreneur mentioned in my article, John Hathaway of Shucks Maine Lobster, is the proud owner of the Avure 215L -- which weighs 80,000 pounds and is 16 feet tall.

The HPP technology was initially developed by the U.S. Army to make better-tasting MREs ("meals ready to eat") for the troops. The science of it is relatively simple. If a piece of food is immersed in water, and the water is then squeezed to high enough pressure, pathogens and bacteria will be neutralized, but the food will be otherwise unaffected.

You press the start button on an Avure machine. Powerful pumps whir, and inside a narrow tube in the center of the machine, the water pressure is compressed to several times the pressure found in the deepest trenches in the ocean. The microscopic bugs in your meal all die, giving the food extended shelf life, and reducing the need for artificial preservatives.

These machines have been in use for a while already. If you've ever eaten Avoclasic guacamole or Hormel Natural Choice deli meats, you've eaten HPP food. HPP machines turn out to be handy for shucking shellfish, too -- the pressure causes the meat to separate from the shell.

What's new is using these machines to process live lobsters. The animals are locked inside the tube, alive, and the pumps whir and the water pressure is compressed around the lobsters to three times the deepest trenches in the ocean. The lobsters die, of course -- just think what the pressure on your ears is like when you dive a few feet underwater.

At the same time, all the muscle flesh inside the lobsters conveniently separates from the shell. For the first time in human history, people have finally devised way to extract the meat of a lobster without cooking it.

And that's what this Whole Foods thing is about. As I write in the Boston magazine article:

In 2005, the Maine Lobster Promotional Council commissioned a survey on people's attitudes toward lobster. Only 15 percent of Americans, mostly in the Northeast, qualified as 'traditionalists' who wanted their lobsters alive. An equally small number, just 13 percent, objected to the retail sale of live lobsters for reasons of cruelty. For Whole Foods, the smart business decision is to target the silent majority -- the 50 percent or so of Americans who would love to buy fresh lobster if only it were easier to prepare.

For Whole Foods, switching to processed, packaged lobster meat will earn them far more money than live lobsters ever did. At the same time, they are presenting it as an ethical choice, which will earn them maximim moral points.

In the meantime, it is this 40-ton U.S.-military-derived crushing machine the company will be relying on, in the name of treating lobsters humanely. To replace its live lobsters, Whole Foods has signed a deal with Clearwater Seafoods of Canada to sell shucked raw frozen lobster, processed using an Avure 687L (pictured above).

According to Avure, the water inside the machine can take from 30 to 45 seconds to reach maximum pressure, and it's unclear how long the animals endure inside -- while they undergo pressurization -- before they die. A spokesperson for Whole Foods told me this:

Whole Foods Market is currently working with a team that specializes in the physiological and welfare aspects of humane slaughter to have this machine evaluated and certified. Pilot studies with this machine suggest that the lobster is killed within seconds (rather than up to several minutes when using the traditional boiling-water cooking method). It is important to us that we ensure this is the case in order to remain consistent with our requirements for humane slaughter that we have established for all of the other species we sell.

It will be interesting to see if "seconds" turns out to be 30 seconds or three seconds. If it's more like 30 seconds, then I suspect that the only way to guarantee that lobsters are killed in a humane fashion for HPP processing would be to use both machines -- run the animals through the CrustaStun first, then load them into the Avure HPP.

When the lobsters come out of the Avure machine after a minute or two, the result is arresting. Every piece of meat can easily be extracted from the shell, raw and fully intact, including the leg muscles. After shucking, here is what the lobster looks like:


The company in Maine I referred to above, Shucks Maine Lobster, even advertises the rather extraordinary possibility of eating "lobster spaghetti" -- which is to say, a heap of lobster leg flesh. Photo below.

My method of killing lobsters with a kitchen knife suddenly seems rather quaint, doesn't it?

Welcome to the future.

Comments? E-mail me.



Comments (2)

- I'm a keen lobster hunter in Florida, and I'm afraid I just grip the lobster firmly in one hand, while twisting the tail off with another. I usually do this at the dock, the minute I get off the boat. (I feel marginally guilty about then reaming the tail with a piece of antenna to remove the vein, but I've gotten over the involuntary twitching). One time after a dive, an interested novice diver was watching the operation, and asked "Does it hurt?" I replied, "Not me!" In any case, I lose patience very quickly with all this "humane killing" mularky. All you need to do is watch animals eat each other in the wild to see how it's supposed to be done!

- We experimented with the HPP equipment to process crab meat but found that while the recovery of meat from the shell was excellent the process completely changed the texture and taste of the crab. The texture was rubbery and the flavor was altered to an inferior level compared to what we are used to. We also tried the machine on a Maine lobster with the same result, rubbery and less flavorful. The upside was that recovery was about one third better than hand picking.

John Wendt
Seatech corporation

"When Whole Foods halted live-lobster sales last week, it was a sign of just how hot the debate over treatment of this New England icon has become. In July's Boston magazine, Trevor Corson reports from behind the lines of the growing 'lobster war.'"

Get my take on the Whole Foods ban on live lobster. Click here to read the article.

Comments? E-mail me.

So now that Whole Foods Market has banned live lobster, what are our options? The animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) recommends that we eat "Mock Lobster." This is a lobster made of soybeans.


What the heck, I thought. I'll try one. I went online to visit May Wah Vegetarian Healthy Food, Inc., the retailer in Chinatown in New York City listed on PeTA's "Lobster Liberation" website.

There is a long tradition of Chinese "mock meats" for Buddhists. Years ago in Hong Kong, I'd eaten at a Buddhist restaurant that served imitation meat that was quite delicious. So I was looking forward to testing PeTA's claim that the mock lobster sold by May Wah tasted "just like the real thing."

When the lobster arrived, still frozen and packed in styrofoam, the label said in Chinese: "Ham Giant Dragon Shrimp." That sounded like the sort of monster that might battle Godzilla.

Having studied Chinese some years ago, I knew that "dragon shrimp" was the word for lobster in Chinese, but why was it called a "ham" lobster? I was stumped.

I shot off a query about this "ham" word to a friend of mine, a gastronome who also has a Ph.D. in Chinese studies. (I will let you know what I find out.) In the meantime, to celebrate my confusion, I decided to name the lobster Ham.

As it happened, I had been invited to a weekend barbecue -- bring your own meat for the grill -- so I took Ham along. Everyone was very intrigued when I pulled Ham out and showed him around. A few people played with Ham.

Then we laid Ham on the grill.

Despite the searing heat, Ham didn't scream. He didn't writhe in pain, or snap his tail or scratch his legs on the grill in agony. He just sat there. We watched for a while, and then it got kind of boring and we went back to our conversations.

After a while I took Ham off the grill. He still looked fine.

Now the hard part. I had to cut him to pieces with a big kitchen knife. I have to tell you, I felt awful slicing Ham. In our short time together, we had bonded.

So how did Ham taste?

Ham, I love you, but you tasted terrible. I mean, not spit-your-food-out terrible, but just . . . very lackluster. After all that, I just would have liked even the tiniest bit of lobster-like flavor.

Having conclusively repudiated PeTA's claim that mock lobster tasted "just like the real thing," I felt forlorn. It seemed unfair that vegetarians and animal-rights activists wouldn't be able to enjoy lobster just like the rest of us.

So imagine my delight when I discovered that a book group populated by vegetarians had read THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS and celebrated with a lobster constructed of vegetables! "Although we were intimidated for a while," says the meeting's report about the veggie lobster, "we eventually tore him limb from limb."

If that still sounds too gory for you, I highly recommend May Wah's shredded mock chicken. It makes a delicious stir-fry. And it looks nothing like a chicken.

Comments? E-mail me.

"Unceremoniously, Whole Foods Markets, the largest natural-foods chain in the world, pulled its lobsters from their tanks last week and boiled them all. For the influential grocer, it was the final lobsterbake," writes Patrik Jonsson, masterfully, in an article in today's Christian Science Monitor.

Who ate them all? He doesn't say.

Jonsson goes on to quote me:

"This is the end of an era, because the lobster is pretty much the last significant animal that [individuals] still have to kill [themselves] before [they] eat it," says Trevor Corson, author of THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS. . . . "I have a serious problem with anyone who's ever had a hamburger complaining about lobsters," Mr. Corson says. "The scientists who study lobsters all take them home and eat them."

What's more, Corson says, Whole Foods is failing to capitalize on one of its missions: connecting consumers to producers. Several Maine lobstermen are now printing their websites on lobsters' claw bands, so that buyers can go online and read a bio of the fisherman who caught their dinner. Such an opportunity for fisherman-consumer bonding is now lost by a chain that purports to value that connection, says Corson. "Whatever moral benefit we get from not having to deal with lobsters in our kitchens, we lose a larger awareness of where our food comes from," he says.

You can learn more about the web-based lobster tracking program I was referring to at Lobster Tales.org. Individual items of seafood, especially fish, are notoriously difficult to track from sea to plate; for example, scientific tests conducted last year by the New York Times revealed that much of the salmon sold as "wild" in New York City was actually farmed. This lobster tracking program is a rare and welcome exception.

Comments? E-mail me.

According to an article in today's Boston Globe, people in New England aren't taking the ban by Whole Foods on live lobsters very seriously.

Celebrated lobster chef Jasper White (who hosted the publication party for my book, THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS) called the move "pure silliness."

And a customer at James Hook, a lobster retailer on the Boston waterfront, had this reaction: "If they ban the lobsters, what's next? I boil them and I'll eat them until the day I die."

Comments? E-mail me.

Comments (2)

- Last time I was at Kroger on Grand Parkway in Katy TX, they still had the lobster tank with live lobsters. I have no qualms about "boiling them alive". We Texans have been doing same to their smaller relatives, the mud bugs (crayfish to you folks east of us).

- The local Wal-Mart where I work dont sell Lobster anymore. But think they always had trouble with lobster tank. Not sure. . . . But Lobsters were big sellers.

In a press release yesterday, the Whole Foods Market gourmet grocery chain finally announced their big decision over whether or not to continue selling live lobster in their stores.

Last fall the company established a "Lobster Task Force" and stated that if it couldn't find a way to transport and store live lobsters in a way that satisfied stringent new conditions for humane treatment, it would remove live lobsters from all Whole Foods locations.

(I guess they won't be installing any of the new lobster arcade games.)

According to a New York Times report, the Safeway chain is also removing live lobsters. The reason? The company says live lobsters aren't a big seller.

Say goodbye to the last live animal you can buy at the supermarket.

Comments? E-mail me.

Comments (1):

- I loved your book. I think it is absolutely ridiculous that people care so much about the treatment of a lobster. Have Whole Foods considered the hard working Americans that catch these sea bugs? Do they not care about their livelihood? Or is it easier to care about something we can't relate too . . . it makes me very sad and angry that we care about the things that don't really matter.

This is a long overdue update to my post on the Japanese lobster vending machine, known as Marine Catcher.

Similar machines are now being built and marketed in the U.S., under the name "The Love Maine Lobster Claw." The game is exactly like one of those arcade machines where you steer a three-pronged claw with a joystick in an attempt to snag a stuffed animal. Except this one involves a tank full of water and live lobsters.

Of course, animal-rights activists are incensed. An AP report brought the appearance of the American machines to my attention in February.

There are several versions of the machine vying for the apparently lucrative live-lobster arcade trade. Visit the website of Marine Ecological Habitats to watch a news clip about the game. You will see Mainers at a convenience store frantically twisting the joystick in their passionate attempts to catch a lobster. Ever considered the supermarket? [Oh, wait, that's not an option anymore -- lobsters have been banned from supermarkets.]

Two bucks buys you 30 seconds. They say it's addictive. And very difficult.

The machine costs around 15 grand, but Marine Ecological Habitats estimates that proud owners the new game can expect to clear an annual profit in the neighborhood of $18,780.

Comments? E-mail me.

I've received some reader questions about whether lobsters can navigate their way around the seafloor using the earth's magnetic field.

As far as I know, clawed American lobsters cannot do this.

However, at least some species of spiny lobster (the ones without claws) do have this ability, and it is amazing. Read all about it.

Comments? E-mail me.

Comments (1):

- This reminds me of a study I read about where scientists noticed freshly molted lobsters bumbling about for a while after shedding. Someone examined the molted skins and found rocks embedded in folds in the shell. So they had an experiment where lobsters would molt in either rock-filled or rock-free tanks. the lobsters that molted in rock-free tanks never came out of the "bumble-fish" stage, while the lobsters with rocks seemed to know their way around better.

THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS was partly a critique of the flawed science being used by government regulators to manage the lobster fishery. I received quite a bit of criticsm from some government scientists for my portrayal.

But since the book came out, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has been revamping lobster management, and on May 9 it announced that the old methods that my book criticized are being replaced. A lot of dedicated people have been working hard to improve the system.

You can download the ASMFC press release here.

Comments? E-mail me.

Canine friends, rejoice! For decades, dogs have been missing out. No longer.

"Lobster Bisque-its let canine companions enjoy seafood" runs the headline of a recent article in the Bangor Daily News. The University of Maine's Lobster Institute has perfected a technique for extracting leftover meat from lobster shells.

"Typically," the article says, "when lobsters are processed, only the meat from the tail, claws, and knuckles are used.

"'The rest is sent to the landfill or used for lower-end types of applications, like compost,' Cathy Billings of the Lobster Institute explained. 'We wanted to to find a more profitable way for the industry to use that part of the lobster during the processing stages.'"

The Lobster Institute first considered a snack aimed at people. For example: lobster breakfast cereal. But the extracted lobster meal was "mushy, gray, [and] pasty."

Shucks.

The "bisque-its" are on sale from Blue Seal Feeds, Inc., for $4.99 for a four-pound bag.

I can certainly think of one event where they would be required eating: the Los Angeles Lobster Pet Parade.

Hungry? Ruff.

Comments? E-mail me

The public libraries of midcoast Maine chose The Kite Runner for last year's community read. This year the official selection for the 2006 Midcoast Maine Community Read was THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS.

Over the course of the winter, the libraries circulated about 600 copies of the book. This month, they hosted several weeks of lobster-themed events. On March 15th I gave back-to-back talks at two of the libraries.

What a blast! The library buildings were decorated inside with all manner of lobster of paraphernalia -- including actual lobster traps.

One of the children's librarians -- Vera -- marked the occasion by wearing her lobster hat and earrings and a bright red outfit. She was boiling over with enthusiasm. And the library staff were all equipped with SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS lapel badges.

Eighty people came to the first talk and 120 attended the second. I showed them my collection of underwater videos of lobsters and we talked about lobster love, science, and fishing.

After the evening talk, a young man with a military haircut approached me and explained that he was based at the nearby Brunswick Naval Air Station, and that he flew in a squadron that hunted submarines -- Commander Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing Five, to be exact.

He told me he was nervous. I'd made a joke during my talk about how I tried to avoid accummulating lobster paraphernalia. Well, he'd brought something to give me.

He need not have worried. Take a close look: it wasn't paraphernalia. It was one of the best lobster gifts I'd ever received: the patrol wing's squadron patch. What an honor.

Remember the scene at the beginning of THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS -- true story -- when a lobster attacks a nuclear submarine? Wow.

Comments? E-mail me.

Kristen, self-proclaimed Mediatinker, fell so in love with the newly discovered blond hairy lobster/crab Kiwa hirsuta (see previous entry) that within days of the announcement, she designed an extraordinarily lifelike stuffed-animal version. She has posted instructions so you can sew together your own at home! Its name is "Tasty" -- a fact that has yet to be ascertained.

Comments? E-mail me.

According to a story hot off today's AP news wire, an undersea research team descended more than 7,000 feet in seas south of Easter Island last year and discovered a bizarre new type of lobster-like crustacean that not only has hair -- lots of it -- but is platinum blond. The lobster has long claws covered with fur, and is so unusual that the scientists decided it was necessary to create an entirely new taxonomic family to describe it.

However, that fuzzy stuff is not really fur at all. Each of those hairs are a seta, a sort of cross between a feeler and a sensor, and it's a good thing this critter has a lot of them, because the animal is blind (there's not much to see 7,000 feet down).

In fact, the experts tell me that this is not really a lobster. This critter probably evolved from a lobster of some sort, and represents a stage on the way to the development of crabs. There are others like it called "squat lobsters," which were common in the Jurassic, but lost out to crabs because the crabs did better in shallow water. Nowadays there are crabs all over the place, but these half-lobster/half-crab crustaceans are rare and -- like our new friend here -- often survive only in remote, deep areas of the ocean.

According to the AP article, the researchers gave this new crustacean the scientific name of Kiwa hirsuta. The family name, Kiwaida, apparently comes from Kiwa, the goddess of crustaceans in Polynesian mythology.

The Polynesians have a goddess of crustaceans? I was born into the wrong culture. If I don't make it to Christian heaven, surely she'll take me. Now I just need to find her shrine and sacrifice a copy of my book to her. I wonder what she looks like.

UPDATE:

A more detailed article from the BBC points out that the "hair" on the creature's legs might actually be for harboring bacteria that detoxify poisonous minerals around the deep-sea vents where this crustacean lives.

Comments? E-mail me.

Comments (1)

I'm just disappointed that the press release didn't include the words "tasty" or "sumptuous."

Folks, this one is just FYI. Some weirdo has set up a website that claims to be the home of a cult called "Lobsters F*cking in a Tent."

Sad to say, the intention of this site appears to be to lampoon in some bizarrely twisted way the novelist Dean Koontz. Being a writer as well (who gets routinely lampooned himself -- "Hey, it's the lobster guy!"), I hesitate to even link to such a thing. And yet . . .

. . . how can I resist? Because this is what it says:

"Lobsters and fun in a tent. (This is not a cult for everyone.) . . . You first have to acquire a tent. I personally prefer those big renaissance style ones in order to provide plenty of room. Next get yourself some lobsters, live or stuffed. I prefer stuffed mainly for safety purposes."

Ah, the internet. If you can shed any light on the connection between Dean Koontz and fornicating lobsters, by all means e-mail me. In the meantime, all apologies to Mr. Koontz.

Jelle Atema, a Woods Hole biologist featured in THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS, was responsible for much of the research into lobster mating behavior and odor detection that I described in the book. You may remember how he was able to steer a lobster at will through a tank -- by mounting odor-release nozzles on the animal's head.

Well, Dr. Atema's latest endeavor, as described on today's National Geographic website, is a $600,000 project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to see if he can do the same thing with . . . sharks.

As in, mind control.

Neuroscientists already know how to steer a living rat around its cage by remote control, as reported in a Boston Globe article in 2004, when Atema's new shark research was just getting underway. The Globe pointed out that "there are some who will worry that, once researchers gain control over sharks, they will move on to humans."

Well, guess what. Remote control of humans is already being done, too, via something called galvanic vestibular stimulation.

As reported in the Nat'l Geo piece: "Atema said that, as with any scientific research, these studies raise ethical concerns that are best addressed by public forums."

Comments? Here's your chance! Quick, before the lobster scientist gets control of your mind. E-mail me.

My inbox is full of e-mails from fans of a television show called "The L Word." Sadly, the "L" doesn't stand for "lobster." The show is about lesbians in Los Angeles. The e-mails all asked a version of the following question:

Q: On the television show "The L Word," a lobster fact was recently mentioned. One of the characters claimed that in a pot of boiling water, male lobsters would form ladders with their claws to try to escape from death while female lobsters would intentionally pull one another down so they would all die together. Since you dispelled the lobster myth from the TV show "Friends" -- that lobsters mate for life -- could you shed some light on this subject?

A: I tried contacting the writers of "The L Word," but I got no response. I assume they invented this "fact" to serve as a convenient allegory. I have never run across any scientific evidence remotely suggestive of its validity. The notion that lobsters would be able to choose altruism or vindictiveness toward each other in the face of death seems a bizarre and fantastical form of anthropomorphism.

I forwarded "The L Word" question to an expert at the University of Maine's Lobster Institute who has studied various issues related to the cooking of lobsters. He had a similar reaction.

But I am always ready to be surprised by new revelations about lobster behavior, and much of what we know about lobster life that is true seems equally unbelievable.

If anything, the situation with male and female lobsters ought to be the reverse. If you've read THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS, you know that female lobsters maintain a sort of sisterhood and cooperate; males just fight all the time. Draw your own conclusions about parallels with human behavior -- lesbian or otherwise.

Comments? E-mail me.

"I was looking at the colors of its shell and turned it over and thought, that's not right."

Those are the words of John Murphy, mechanic at Sorrento Lobster Inc., a lobster pound near Mount Desert Island, Maine. Sure, everyone else had noticed that the mutant lobster was half blue. Murphy turned it over and took a look-see at the mutant's privates.

Guess what? T'weren't just two different colors. That lobster was a he-she, too. One side was male. The other female.

An article about this mutant lobster in a local newspaper, the Ellsworth American, misidentified the animal as a hermaphrodite. A hermaphrodite either switches genders during a lifestyle change or has complete sets of both male and female genitalia. What this extraordinary lobster is experiencing is a condition known as gynandromorphy, in which the animal was accidently built with parts of both male and female plumping. I've written on gynandromorphs in a post called Gender Bender.

Apparently, the five-year-old daughter of the manager of the lobster pound took quite a liking to the genderly confused crustacean.

"She's constantly reminding me to say 'hello' when she can't do so herself," the manager said. "She's fascinated by it. In the eyes of a 5-year-old, it's like having a dragon."

A dragon?

The Lobster Institute at the University of Maine plans to try breeding the thing when it reaches sexual maturity. For what, an army?

Sadly, I have not been able to determine which side of the half-blue lobbie is the male side and which is the female. Care to venture your own guess, with your reason why? E-mail me.

Regarding my recent post How to Kill a Lobster, one reader sent me this question:

"I'm wondering about the following comment you make:

"'Cool the lobster in the freezer for fifteen minutes or so.'

"Would this not be fifteen minutes of torture for the lobster?"

Lobsters are cold-blooded, so the temperature of their blood and their bodies is always changing to match the exact temperature of the water (or, in this case, air) around them. In nature, when ocean water cools, the lobster's blood cools at the same time, causing a slowing of the animal's heart rate, metabolism, activity, and appetite. The colder the water becomes, the colder and less active the lobster. One scientist I spoke with, who has conducted extensive studies of the affect of temperature on lobster physiology, said she thinks that lobsters experience less stress the colder they become.

Another scientist I spoke with noted that there still isn't much scientific literature on whether, and how, lobsters experience pain, so we just don't know. Judging from his observations, though, he added that as a lobster cools down, it does not have the ability to try to stay warm by shivering, etc., that, say, humans do, which leads him to think the lobster probably becomes "groggy" and less conscious as it gets colder. He also suspects that by the time a chef puts the lobster in the freezer for a few minutes, the animal is often already groggy from being out of water and having reduced oxygen. The analogy he drew to human experience would be the gradual loss of consciousness (followed eventually by death) that occurs when someone inhales carbon monoxide by running a car in a garage with the garage door closed. But he acknowledged that was just his opinion.

So if there is a definitive answer to the question, it will have to await the development of more sophisticated methods of research for determining what lobsters might actually be feeling.

Comments? E-mail me.

Since this post was written in December 2005, a lot has happened. The way lobsters are sold, killed, and prepared is changing dramatically. So along with this post, you might also be interested in How to Kill a Lobster, Redux, where I discuss some of the freaky high-tech methods that have been devised for dispatching lobsters in the future. -Trevor

People don't like the idea of putting a live lobster in the pot. I am frequently asked about the most humane way to cook a lobster. I agree that lobsters shouldn't be boiled alive. That's why I'm going to explain how to kill the animal before you put it in the pot. And I'm going to show you photographs of how to do it properly.

First I must mention the celebrated writer David Foster Wallace. Wallace has published a book of essays called Consider the Lobster. The book's title essay originally appeared in the August, 2004 issue of Gourmet magazine. Wallace can be a provocative and interesting writer, but this essay is rambling and factually inaccurate, and to my mind is little more than a cheap manipulation of the natural unease many people feel about killing and cooking lobsters (though it was an effective publicity stunt for Gourmet). I talked about the ethics of lobsters, and voiced a few criticisms of Wallace, in an interview with Salon last year.

Still, Wallace has a point: at least beef slaughterhouses make an effort to stun the cows before ripping them apart alive. That's why I advocate killing the lobster before cooking. Okay, now for the instructions I promised. Here is an illustrated demonstration, dedicated to David Foster Wallace. And yes, that's me in these pictures.

Step 1: Cool the lobster in the freezer for fifteen minutes or so. Lobsters are cold-blooded and their body temperature adapts to match the ambient temperature around them, with a corresponding slowing of their heart rate, metabolism, and neural functioning. Cooling the lobster prevents it from moving around while you're working, which is a lot safer, and results in some deadening of the animal's nervous system.

Step 2: Hold the lobster upside down and place the point of the knife between its hindmost legs.


Step 3: Thrust the knife straight down into the body.


Step 4: Slice down through the head, to split the front of the animal in half.


There you go, folks. That's the best -- and the most humane -- way to kill a lobster; this way, the animal will be dead before it hits the scalding water. (Wallace dismisses this knife technique, but like I said, it's what most of the pros do.)

A few additional pointers:

- You don't have to slice all the way through the last bit of shell to the cutting board -- leave the top of the lobster's shell intact for a more attractive presentation on the plate.

- If you execute the knife maneuver correctly, the claws and front legs should go instantly limp. But be aware that because lobsters have a decentralized nervous system, the tail and hind legs may continue to twitch. (If that bothers you, remember that this is an animal equivalent to a mosquito. If it still bothers you, you should probably consider eating mock lobster.)

- Immediately after you kill the lobster, put it in the pot to boil, as you would have with the live animal.

WARNING: Working with live animals and large knives can be tricky. Try this at your own risk. I make no claims to be a qualified instructor of culinary butchery, and I will not be responsible if you hurt yourself while attempting to replicate the techniques described here. If you're at all uncomfortable with the idea of implementing this technique, stick to the boiling alive, okay? Better that the lobster gets hurt than you.

On the other hand, for those of you who crave additional drama and heroism in your kitchen, there are, of course, even more exciting ways to kill a lobster:


Incidentally, the lobster being dispatched in the photos above was one of four enjoyed as Christmas Eve dinner with my family, during my annual trek home for the holidays. The lobsters were caught in the waters around Little Cranberry Island, perhaps even by some of the lobstermen described in my book, and they were delicious.

What is really sad about David Foster Wallace's essay on lobsters from Gourmet is that he misses the point about lobsters as food. Live lobster is one of the last feasts still harvested in a sustainable fashion directly from nature by individuals, not corporations, and sold absolutely fresh, without processing.

Gourmet magazine . . . hello? Earth to Ruth Reichl?

P.S. For more of my thoughts on PETA and lobster pain, see my earlier blog entry on the subject. And don't take my word for all this. What follows is a statement prepared by Dr. Neville Gregory, who received an award from England's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

(At the time Dr. Gregory prepared the following statement on lobsters, he worked in the Animal Welfare and Stress department of the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. New Zealand has a significant fishery for spiny lobsters.)

The Humane Way to Kill a Lobster
by Dr. Neville Gregory

The appropriate way to humanely kill a lobster is to chill it, then kill it by either splitting or spiking it.

Chefs using this method can be sure that they are killing the lobsters humanely, while preparing good quality lobster meat.

Any animal killed for meat consumption must be killed humanely. This means the animal must not be stressed when being handled, should be held at the place of slaughter for only a short time under appropriate conditions, and the killing method must not cause pain or distress prior to death.

Many seafood shops and restaurants and also private citizen chefs kill lobsters inhumanely.

Eight common procedures are used to kill lobsters, usually with two or more methods combined. These were chilling, drowning, spiking, chest spike, splitting, and tailing, freezing, and boiling (definitions listed below).

Freezing or boiling methods affect the quality of the meat. Boiling lobsters alive tends to make the meat chewy while freezing makes the meat lose its fresh appearance. Both are inhumane.

Lobsters need to be chilled before being killed.

Being cold blooded, chilling the lobster helps reduce nerve function and metabolic activity. When it is fully chilled, the lobster will stop moving and no longer responds to being handled.

After chilling a lobster, split it along its length where it has two chains of nerve ganglia, with interconnecting nerves along its body under the shell. Chilling beforehand prevents the lobster from moving which avoids mistakes during splitting -- otherwise it is hard to achieve a humane kill in an unchilled animal.

Comments? E-mail me.

Comments (2)

- A note to say thank you. I just executed 5 lobsters exactly as you suggested, and I now agree with you. Its a quick and efficient method. I tried a number of other methods, with spiking being the most gruesome by far, and this worked the quickest and cleanest. Grazie tante!

- I thought I'd send a note to tell you I enjoyed your post on humanely killing a lobster. I haven't fully explored your blog yet but I will bookmark it for sure. I LOVE lobster. I lived in lobster-land (boston) for 28 years, so. (They are on the level of mosquitos? I had no idea.)

The lobstering community of Little Cranberry Island received a shock on Monday, December 12, when Jack Merrill's lobster boat went up in flames while he was fishing fifteen miles offshore. Jack and his sternman had to throw themselves into the frigid sea to avoid being burned alive.

Readers of THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS will know Jack Merrill well -- he is one of the book's main characters. A number of important scenes in the book occurred aboard Jack's boat the Bottom Dollar. It is sad, and strange, to think that the Bottom Dollar now rests at the bottom of the sea. But it's a relief that Jack and his sternman Les are safe.

The details of the dramatic fire and rescue were reported today in the local newspaper, the Mount Desert Islander. The article is below.


FAST FIRE SENDS MEN OVERBOARD

by Craig Crosby
Mount Desert Islander
(reproduced with permission)

December 15, 2005

MOUNT DESERT ROCK - Jack Merrill believed he and Bottom Dollar would fish together for as long as he continued to haul traps.

But under an overcast sky on Monday, between Great Duck Island and Mount Desert Rock, Mr. Merrill watched in stunned horror as the boat that had provided his livelihood for more than 20 years went up in smoke, taking Mr. Merrill's plans along with it.

"I thought it would be the boat I would fish out of the rest of my life," Mr. Merrill said. Now the 54-year-old Mount Desert lobster fishermen is looking to start over.

He is unsure what went wrong, and now that Bottom Dollar, a 40-foot boat designed by Young Brothers of Corea, is resting at the bottom of the ocean, he is unlikely to ever know. What he is sure of is that he just experienced some of the most frightening minutes of his life.

Mr. Merrill called fisherman Bruce Damon a little before 10 a.m. on Monday to report that his boat was having engine problems and that he was steaming for home. Moments later, while still approximately 15 miles off shore, Mr. Merrill noticed smoke rising from below and went down to investigate. The flames were already licking the underdecking. Mr. Merrill instructed the only other person on the boat, sternman Les Ricker of Mount Desert, to prepare the survival suits as Mr. Merrill emptied two new fire extinguishers, and then water, on the growing flames. Mr. Ricker also filled two lobster traps with buoys, which the men would later use for floatation.

The men had little time in which to work. Roughly 10 minutes elapsed from the time Mr. Merrill first noticed the smoke until he and Mr. Ricker were forced to don their survival suits and jump overboard into the 45-degree water. Worse still, the flames had knocked out Bottom Dollar's radio, leaving the men helpless to send a mayday alert.