WHAT IS A LOBSTER?

The world’s love affair with lobster began out of necessity. It wasn’t a mutual affection though: it was as lopsided as unrequited love. Humans needed to eat and the crustacean was often within easy reach by hand, spear, long hook, baskets and later nets and traps. But the shellfish eventually became more than just grub – its status shifted from vital protein to pauper’s food to cultural icon. This relationship has always been complex. When lobsters were abundant many coastal dwellers disdained them. But their popularity with wealthy urban diners drove innovations that nearly annihilated the stocks. It was through these innovations and mass marketing that lobster ended up on dinner plates in Tokyo, Japan and Dubuque, Iowa. Clearly, this affaire d’amour isn’t a tawdry fling. It’s a long-term relationship.
The worldwide lobster industry is still thriving because early regulations prevented overfishing. Yet worry about losing the species continues amid record catches and several perplexing scares, and today lobsters and their consumers are under another threat. As concern about the humane treatment of lobsters heats up, demand may decline as purveyors become reluctant to sell them. Compassion is building for all animals and that includes the lobster. Some countries are considering broadening animal welfare laws to include these lively shellfish. Once again new technology is a significant factor – with new killing machines that use electrocution and water pressure. Divorced from the primal experience of kill ing our dinner, we are in danger of losing the connection between the food we ingest and its origin. The idyllic experi ence of eating a freshly boiled lobster on a coastal dock may become extinct. If that happens, will anyone recognize the feisty iconic shellfish on Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone or on Maine’s licence plate? Will we even remember what lobsters symbolize – summertime leisure on the rockbound coast, eating exquisite seafood with friends provided by in de pendent fisherwomen and men braving the elements to bring in the catch? What happens to the experience of ‘eating a lobster’?
Humans and lobsters have a long history together. Long before we knew much about this crustacean, lobsters found their way into artistic creations as a revered shellfish, symbol, status or otherwise. Spiny lobsters adorn a fifteenth-century BC Egyptian temple in an aquatic scene depicting new, fascinating animals and plants from an expedition down the Red Sea along the coast of East Africa. As early as the first century BC, spiny lobsters appeared in a mosaic floor in the dining room of ancient Pompeii and in Virgil’s Aeneid, as Palinurus, the helmsman of the Trojan fleet. They are part of a mosaic floor in the dining room of a Pompeian house de picting how the floor would look after the diners had finished – leaving the inedible shells and bones ‘dropped under the tables’.
Humans are still captivated by lobster. But most lobster lovers know less about them than some of the early Egyptians or Peruvians or Italians. To begin our introduction to the fascinating history of lobsters and their consumption, meet Fiona. She is dressed in a spotted orange and yellow outfit. At seven years old, she weighs a pound and threequarters . And because of her spiffy get-up, she is about as unusual as say one in 30 million. This youngster, probably a yellow lobster in spite of her orange spots, was caught in Canada near Prince Edward Island in 2009. Instead of being sold as a lobster dinner, she lives in a tank with close to 100 other lobsters in Arnold’s Lobster and Clam Bar in Eastham, Massachusetts and may be donated to an aquarium.
She was named for owner Nathan Nickerson’s girlfriend’s granddaughter. How Fiona survived is still a mystery. Usually lobsters in the Atlantic Ocean are a greenish brown or a blackish blue so they blend into their habitat. Fiona is the product of a rare genetic mutation, and would be an easy target for predators in her yellow shell, as are the scarce royal blue, red, white and even two-toned lobsters. ‘All of these except the white ones turn red when cooked’, as do lobsters worldwide, writes Dr Robert Bayer, an American lobster researcher. But she does have two powerful weapons to defend herself – her claws.
Fiona is one of two distinct varieties of lobsters – clawed and clawless – that are worthy of any food lover’s attention and commercially important. In Fiona’s family there are three noteworthy clawed lobsters. She is the American in a group of European and Norway lobsters that are found in the colder, northern Atlantic Ocean. But she is not the only beauty. The clawless group comprises the sometimes stunning, ubiquitous spiny lobsters of warmer, tropical waters primarily in Australasia, plus their cousins, the slipper lobsters and furry lobsters. What do they have in common? All lobsters are treasured for their ‘firm, sweet white meat’, which is ‘satisfyingly full of flavour and ... remarkably similar the world over’, said British chef Rick Stein, who advocates eating lobster where they come right out of the ocean. All are sold live, as frozen tails or cooked, and have ten legs on the underside, as they are in the decapod family.
Mostly nocturnal and dwelling on the ocean floor, lobsters eat what’s available in their environment but prefer crustaceans, fish, molluscs, sea urchins, snails and worms. For a primitive creature, clawed lobsters are more finicky than we realize, preferring fresh food – they like a variety of select plants and almost 100 different animals including lobster bait (salted or fresh fish bits). Sometimes clawed lobsters in captivity in tanks turn to cannibalism, though this has not been seen in the wild. If necessary, both lobster species may forage for dead animals. While fish gobble their food whole, these crustaceans are ‘nibblers’. They ‘pull, tear, crush and manipulate food items’ until they’re bite-size pieces that fit into their mouths. Both lobsters migrate annually from warmer, shallower waters to deeper heat-stable waters in winter. Clawed and clawless lobsters have a common ancestor from about 251 to 290 million years ago. Yet despite their similarities, they’re not close relatives. Clawed lobsters are more closely related to freshwater crayfish than to the clawless group. But which should you eat?

By Elisabeth Townsend in "Lobster - A Global History"  published by Reaktion Books Ltd, London. 2011, excerpts 681-686. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.