The Secret Life of Lobsters is not one of those Victorian Gentlemen's Entertainments, though it has a lot of bullying, fight clubs, sex, violence, home invasions, pissing contests, extreme nudity, pilgrimages, super-heroes, robots and alien autopsies. And that's just the lobsters.
The Secret Life of Lobsters is much more than about lobsters, the book, written by Trevor Corson, is as much about the people who fish lobsters and the researchers who study what happens on the bottom of the sea. Expanded from a feature in Atlantic Monthly, the book is an engaging read, both for the inhabitants of Maine's Little Cranberry Island, and for the fascinating details of the life of the American lobster, and one of the few sustainable fisheries on the East Coast.
Corson writes from what he knows, he has spent most of his life in and around Maine, and spent two years working on a lobster boat as a sternman, baiting, dropping and hauling traps. The book started as an article in The Atlantic Magazine, but is quite different from the original article. A large part of the book deals with the people of Little Cranberry Island who trap lobsters, and the researchers who try to discover the life cycle of this crustacean which has been around for 150 million years.
Lobstering is one of the few sustainable fisheries because it is bottom up, there is no top-down corporate factory, and most catches go back into the ocean since there are regulations about minimum and maximum sizes, plus "v-notching", cutting a notch into the tail of egg-bearing females and throwing them back. He doesn't gloss over what is one of the most dangerous livelihoods in the world.
The description of the discovery of the life cycle of the lobster is really interesting, such as how lobsters breed, and the role of molting in their life. Since lobsters are crustaceans, when they grow, they have to shed their exoskeleton, which leaves them vulnerable, and the only time for females when they can mate. Normally combative, lobsters spend most of their time fighting amongst themselves, and sense their environment through chemical receptors in their antenna. However, through emission of the right chemicals in their urine, they establish molting and mating. One of their greatest threats is pesticide runoff into coastal waters.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
gees, that's a great pdf. enough detail to list little podunkvilles like New Sweden and North Anson (where i went to high school)
2 - Johno
Maine is a freaky place. I went to college with a guy from a town that had no name, just a number that used to refer to a logging camp decades ago.
3 - Dick Atlee
I agree that the book is a fascinating -- unexpectedly a page turner. The author describes the style as "literary journalism", and he does a great job of setting up cliff-hangers at the end of the mini-sections that make up the three threads of the story (lobsters, fishermen, and scientists). What's nice about the experience is that you suddenly arrive at the end of the book and realize you've painlessy acquired a whole host of fascinating info that you weren't aware you were being taught.
4 - danika
ok people stop eating lobster how could you its rude what if someone eat you how would you feel oh wait your dead