Louisiana Foods Fish Fact for:
LOBSTER

Good times for lobster "wicked good" as one Maine lobsterman put it. At 18,200 metric tons, Maine's 1994 season was the best in state history, and the frosting on the cake was an average ex-vessel price of $2.60 a pound. Canada's catch, on the other hand, was down slightly from 1993, to 39,800 metric tons. Spiny lobster are still in tight supply because of high Asian demand for live lobster, but at the right price the availability is there. Warmwater tails from Aus-tralia's Torres Strait and cold-water tails from South Africa have found new niches in the U.S. market, but supplies are limited.

Species Specifics
  • A one-pound American lobster, Homarus amencanus, lays between 8,000-12,000 eggs, of which only one-tenth of 1% will develop and survive longer than six weeks.
  • "Spiny lobster" and "rock lobster" are interchangeable terms, referring to some 40 species of clawless lobster strewn around the globe.
  • It takes an American lobster four to seven years to grow to one pound.
  • American lobster feed primarily on live clams, crabs, mussels, starfish, sea urchins and smaller lobster.
  • The European lobster, Homarus gammarus, is virtually identical to the American lobster. No similar species exist naturally anywhere in the world.

Lobster Recruits
No, not the army. Each year American lobster just below mini-mum size shed their shells (molt) and become "recruited" into the legal size range. In Maine, for example, about 80-90% of the har-vest consists of recruits. Do Lobster Have Teeth? Yes. They're located in the lobster's stomach, which is just behind the mouth. The food (small fishes and other crustaceans) are chewed in the stomach with three grinding surfaces that resemble molars and are called a "gastric mill."

Bronx Lobster?
Ya gotta be kiddin. But it's true. The Bronx lobster is an American lobster, only not quite. It's shorter, browner and less sweet than an American lobster, and its undisputed champion (the king of Bronx lobster) is Sal Comerico, who catches them off City Island and serves them proudly at his restaurant as Long Island lobster..."because they sell better," he says. No one would question him on that point because the local lobster is sniffily snubbed by every other restaurant on City Island. But Comerico, whose resemblance to the Bronx lobster is noted by his competitors, is doing very well, a millionaire in fact, with 3,000 lobster traps, more than half the traps registered by the area's 22 lobster-man. "The truth is I'm a legend," said the modest monarch to the New York Times.

Marching Rock Lobster
Migrating lobster in Western Australia travel the bottom in long, narrow columns, a behavior pattern that local rock lobstermen have turned to their advantage. One boat that pinpointed the migration route reportedly landed 3.5 tons of the marchers in one day's fishing. The migration takes place every January northwest of the Abrolhos Islands. Aussies call the migrating lobsters "whites" because their shells are pale from recent molting.

The above information is from the Seafood Leader.
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