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A lobster of that size used to be relatively common, but commercial lobstering has effectively kicked that in the ass.
This is true; there are many reputable records of lobsters measuring between 4' and 6' long landed in New England in the 1800s. Of course, until the late 19th century, lobster was considered a trash fish and not usually eaten for food, except by servants, slaves, and prisoners.
This lobster, at 11 pounds and change, is impressively large but not all that amazing in New England. Every season one of these 10+ guys turns up in most lobstering towns. They are worth a lot; casinos and banquet halls will pay premium for them, steam them whole and put them on display as a centerpiece to a buffet.
The reason lobsters of that size are found more rarely is twofold. One is that they are too big for most lobster pots, so they don't normally make their way inside. The second, of course, as sciurus says, is commercial fishing. Most lobsters don't live long enough (50+ years) to grow to this size; lobsters continue growing until they die.
However, this doesn't mean they're endangered. Unlike many other fish stocks, the lobster population doesn't appear to be overfished at this point. Numbers seem to be healthy and to show no decline. The price of lobster is due not to its rarity but to the difficulty of shipping it. Lobster here in Maine can easily be found for $5 a pound in summer.
Final bit of lobster trivia: lobster pots don't really work. That is, they don't actually trap lobsters -- they merely delay them for a time. For centuries, fishermen thought their trap design was preventing lobsters from escaping. But the U of Maine created a Lobstercam program over the past few years which puts cameras on pots. They found that lobsters can fairly easily make their way into and out of lobster pots. The lobsters which end up being caught are just those which happened to be in the trap, eating bait or resting, at the time it was pulled.
Though I have learned a great deal about lobsters and find them very interesting as animals and as icons, I don't like their flavor. I prefer crab.
I'm glad he put him back. Lobsters mate for life, so mrs lobzilla is down there looking for him. Ad I'm with Meeks on the flavor preference. I could eat pounds of crab legs. Lobster tastes like bad chicken to me.
It was quite logical for colonial people to turn their nose up at lobsters; they're basically insects, and cod and salmon were arguably tastier and still incredibly abundant in American waters. But cod are also bottom-feeders, and were highly valued. So were eels, which were highly prized.
Quite a few of the fish we consider good food today were trash until recently. Monkfish is a great example; so is so-called "snow crab", and there's an increasing market for dogfish (a small shark), tilefish (kinda like flounder), and sea urchin. All were regularly discarded until at least the 80s, when preferred fish species started to become so rare due to overfishing that there was a need to create markets for less desirable fish.
But cod are also bottom-feeders, and were highly valued.
Hey, I'm vegetarian, 97% vegan. No worries about bottom-feeding fish or parasitic worms or mad cow or bird flu eventually moving through pork or [etc]
:-)
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
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