I think the US is doing the right thing here. Lobster populations are going down so regulations are being enacted to limit harvesting.
Lobster isn't exactly a staple food anyways. I have it maybe twice a year in a sushi roll or sandwich, which is probably more often than your average North American.
It's not exactly a staple food for you, is what you mean.
I know plenty of people in fishing communities that eat lobster at the same rate you may eat hamburgers or pasta. One of my close friends growing up had a lobster fisherman father, and they ate it once a day. That and deer/moose meat was the staple food.
Edit: The goal of this comment was not to say that this is incorrect, I am for this change. My goal was just to say I feel there are places where it is staple. That's it.
Lobsters are overrated. They're bottom-feeders that in the US were originally only considered food fit for slaves, prisoners, and pigs, or as bait and fertilizer. Lobsters are intelligent creatures that feel pain. The way lobsters are boiled alive and kept starving in tanks at grocery stores and restaurants is gross. Also they're ugly.
This is the weirdest mix of repping for lobster's rights but still shitting on them at the same time. Has real "we should euthanize all the pugs" energy but honestly I'm here for it
I agree, it's a small amount. But you can't paint broad strokes like that. What we consider staple foods is completely different then China, Africa... The world is much larger then Canada and US.
You are gettign a lot of flack about the staple food comment. I don't think its even necessary.
If its a wild caught species there is very little expectation to factor that in. Perhaps you can bifurcate the model between commercial and hobby fishers but not much more.
When I was in Massachusetts I went to a museum with an exhibit on the history of the fishing industry. At first they hunted whales near the surface, until there where no more whales in the Atlantic. There was actually a map diagraming how each year the whaling fleet needed to travel further and further south. Then it was cod. Then halibut. And now lobster. Overt two centuries, the industry systematically cleaned out species in order from sea surface to sea bottom.
I think most people would prefer traveling alone in their own compartment and directly to their destination (and having a personal vehicle when arriving there), all else being equal.
For those who want to eat sea food despite declining population numbers. Gordon Ramsay did a piece on how global warming was causing king crab to move north into former colder waters where they destroyed the ecosystem by reducing fish stocks and caused their numbers to balloon.
A takeaway needs to be actionable. That's kinda the whole point. If there are too many king crabs, we can action on that by making their removal economically favorable.
I'd be curious to hear what the people downvoting my comments think the author was implying in their comment, which so far as I can tell is saying the exact same as mine just less bluntly.
A takeway just needs to be memorable. Actionable is nice, but not a requirement. "We can't do anything useful in this situation" can be a valid takeaway, as can "we do not know enough at this point."
In this situation, my takeaway is that we do not know enough, and that's what I understood the parent's post to be saying.
Removing the surplus crabs might help, it might set off another chain of poorly understood events.
Lobsters in the gulf of Maine are fed A LOT of herring as bait. Like 70,000 tons a year. Hard to say what the overall result of this is. More lobsters? Less Herring?
Some lobstermen joke that they feel more like ranchers then fishermen.
The smaller lobsters are tastier (little known secret). I typically go for 1lb or 1 1/4 lb when everyone gets google-eyed at the 1 1/2 lb or bigger ones.
But most lobster gets processed, and is not consumed whole. In that case I am all in favor of supporting the lobster fishery like this
For lobster at least, the sweetness of the meat decreases as a lobster gets bigger though it's more than just the same level of flavor compounds being spread across a smaller amount of total mass.
I hear some farmers pump water into chickens to increase the weight so it sells for more. I also hear the same thing about bean moisture content since it's sold by weight (I think the Smarter Every Day has a video about granaries that shows this?).
Will this put pressure for farmed lobsters to be full of growth hormones?
If you happen to know, I've been curious about the water weight of various foods. In particular, I've bought dried or canned beans or tuna or other such things, and attempting to correct for the water weight I normalized on total labeled protein mass (or some other relevant macronutrient) rather than total mass. However, water content still varied dramatically for on-paper identical goods.
Do you happen to know if that's a quirk of US food labeling laws (e.g., they can report a certain number of grams of protein per gram of food so long as water is within a 40% margin), or if there's some other factor at play that would allow macronutrients to actually be similar in qualitatively different products?
Suggested title update: include species context, which is the American or Maine Lobster (officially "Homarus americanus").
That species is quite different from the myriad species of spiny lobster that are common throughout much of the world (notably that the American Lobster has claws).
I know the practice of de-clawing crabs led to small claws as a dominant characteristic till it was abandoned, and similarly the illegality of harvesting molting variants of hard-shelled crabs resulted in local populations of permanently quasi-soft-shell crabs. Admittedly that took decades rather than the few years we might see for a lobster size ban, but minor evolutionary tweaks when those phenotypes already exist in the wild don't take long to establish themselves under heavy fishing pressure.
Why not maximum size? Larger lobsters produce significantly more eggs than small ones. A big one might be worth 2-5 times a small one and it’s a proven survivor
Better get it done before this most recent Supreme Court case gets overruled and biased courts will set the laws when they aren't subject matter experts.
The (US) courts rule on the legality of the laws with respect to the constitution and then rule if the prosecution/enforcement of the law is correct within the legal framework.
It feels so strange that lobster are cheap in the US. There is this place at the Alpine Rd. in Portala Valley with the name "Lobster shack" that sells fast food lobsters.
I mean, it was nice, but felt like a waste on the lobsters ...
For much of history lobsters were considered "sea bugs" and reserved for the poorest of the poor to eat, much as one might treat a cockroach. The idea that they are valuable is a rather recent invention.
Lobster isn't exactly a staple food anyways. I have it maybe twice a year in a sushi roll or sandwich, which is probably more often than your average North American.