A live lobster -- they only turn red when cooked.
The American lobster is found along much of the Atlantic coast, but it is most famously associated with Maine, which supplies live lobsters to restaurants and fish markets all over the country. Some purists, however, maintain that the best lobster was caught yesterday, spent the last 24 hours suspended in a crate fasting to clear its bowels, and was just now boiled in a pot of fresh seawater over a driftwood campfire on a rocky Maine shore.
Instructions
Preparation
1. Ensure that you have the proper licensing and documentation. In Maine, you must have lobstering license. Most licenses are for commercial lobster fisheries, but Maine residents can now obtain non-commercial licenses. A written test is required. You will also need to specify the boat you intend to fish from, so make sure all of the registration requirements to operate the boat are in order.
2. Prepare and check your traps to ensure that they are serviceable, and also that they comply with legal requirements. All traps must have escape vents to allow undersized lobsters and crabs to escape, and they must be equipped with "ghost panels" that open the trap in case it is lost or abandoned on the sea floor. The trap must also be built to protect lobster's legs and claws from being damaged or torn off while the trap is being hauled aboard; simple wooden runners creating a gap of at least 1/4 inch between the trap and the boat's hull should do the trick. Be sure a current trap tag -- issued with your license -- is attached to every trap.
3. Prepare your buoys. Buoys are how you find and retrieve your traps, and they must be plainly marked with your license number. Buoys are also painted with a distinctive color pattern identifying their owner. It's illegal to pull someone else's gear. Also, ensure that you use sinking line -- rope that will not float -- and include a weak link in your gear that will break with no more than 600 pounds of tension; this is requirement to prevent whales from becoming accidentally entangled and drowning.
4. Ready the boat. Ensure she is fueled up and seaworthy and her safety equipment is all in order, and that all the gear is secured aboard.
Setting the Trap
5. Select a spot to place your trap. Make sure it's not so deep that your buoy will be submerged at low tide; if it is, you'll never get it back. Avoid placing it in the middle of a major thoroughfare; you don't want the buoys or lines to be damaged by ship propellers. It's also a good idea not to put it too close to other buoys where it might get entangled with someone else's gear.
6. Bait your trap. Fish or chum is usual. It's unlawful in Maine to use offal in lobster traps -- that's any bait made from a creature other than a marine organism. Place the bait bag in the "kitchen," which is the first chamber of the trap. Lobsters enter the kitchen through the weir-like entrance, or "head," but often have difficulty finding their way back out, and wander instead deeper into the next chamber, called the "parlor."
7. Check the line attached to your trap to ensure that it won't get tangled around anything -- like your leg -- when you put it overboard. Make sure it is an appropriate length for the depth of water. Secure the buoy to the end of the line.
8. Put the baited trap overboard, and let it sink to the bottom. Stay clear of the line as it pays out. Once it is placed, leave it there with the buoy marking its location. Also make a note on the map, so you know where to come back to look for the buoy in a day or two.
Bringing in the Catch
9. Return to the spot where you set your trap, and locate your buoy. Pull the boat up alongside. Retrieve the buoy from the water, using a gaff to hook the line. Haul the line up, and bring the trap back aboard the boat. This can be done by hand, but most commercial lobster men have hydraulic haulers equipped to speed the process.
10. Open the trap. There will likely be some sea creatures in it -- sea stars, crabs, perhaps even a fish small enough to get in through the trap head, but big enough to be trapped. Unless you've got a permit to catch these other creatures, release them. Be careful of snapping claws and jaws.
11. Remove any lobster from the trap, and inspect it carefully. Check its size with your lobster-size gauge. If the carapace of the lobster, as measured from the back of the eye sockets to the back of the body shell, is less than 3.25 inches or more than 5 inches, you have to let it go.
12. Examine the lobster's tail. If it has a V-shaped notch clipped out the flipper immediately to the right of the center flipper on the tail, it has been marked as a breeding female, and you must release it to help ensure future generations of lobsters. If there is a mass of eggs glued to the swimmerets on the underside of the tail, use a knife or clippers to cut a V-shaped notch in the right flipper, and release the lobster overboard.
13. Secure the claws of any remaining lobster with strong elastic bands, so it cannot pinch you or anyone else, and place the animal in a holding tank to keep it alive and fresh until it can be cooked.
Tags: your trap, with your, commercial lobster, else gear, ensure that