INSHORE FISHERIES 231 



The female lobster spawns but once in two years. The 

 eggs, after being laid, are carried by the female in clusters 

 under the tail for a period of ten or eleven months, be- 

 fore they hatch. The number of eggs laid varies with the 

 size of the fish. The law of reproduction has been ex- 

 pressed as follows : The number of eggs produced at 

 each reproductive period varies in a geometrical series, 

 while the length of lobsters producing these eggs varies 

 in an arithmetical series. Thus, an 8 inch lobster pro- 

 duces 5,000 eggs, a 10 inch lobster, 10,000 eggs, and one 12 

 inches long, 20,000 eggs. 1 The high rate of production is 

 not maintained beyond the length of fourteen or six- 

 teen inches. The average female lobster lays eggs for 

 the first time in the summer of its sixth year. The largest 

 number of eggs recorded for a female is 97,440. 2 



After being hatched the young lobsters cut loose from 

 their mother, and rise to the surface where they live as 

 larvae, being about one-third of an inch long. Within a 

 period of eight weeks the larvae have passed through three 

 stages, and have molted five or six times. By this time 

 they are three-fifths of an inch long and sink to the bot- 

 tom, seeking to find some sheltering piles of rocks near 

 the shore where they can burrow. When winter ap- 

 proaches the young lobster is from one to three inches 

 long. This short sketch of the method of reproduction of 

 the lobster and its early life as larvae is given that it may 

 be more easily understood why the lobster needs ample 

 protection from man if it is to persist as a food-fish on 

 our shores. 



Previous to the year 1880 there had been no attempt to 

 write a history of the lobster fishery or to publish any ex- 

 tensive reports on the subject. Mention is made in the 

 early records of the New England colonists of the abun- 



1 Commissioners of Inland Fisheries, Rhode Island, 1906. 



2 F. H. Herrick, The American Lobster. 



