CRUSTACEAANDMAN 1 57 



form is prohibited bv law. This has led to the development of an 

 air freight service from some of the fishing ports, so that living 

 lobsters can be quickly transported inland. The relative value of 

 the spiny lobster in Californian fisheries can be judged from the 

 fact that although rated twenty-first by poundage the lobster was 

 rated eleventh in monetary value in 1946. 



Modern methods are also used by the Russians, who have floating 

 canneries operating in the Arctic and North Pacific Oceans; their 

 produce includes canned crab which can be bought at some of the 

 better food stores in London. 



When a fishing industry becomes highly organised there is always 

 the danger that the stock may be reduced to such a level as to make 

 fishing uneconomical. This is guarded against by various laws. In 

 Britain no lobster under nine inches in length should be offered for 

 sale, and any lobster carrying eggs must be returned to the sea. In 

 South California there is a closed season for the spiny lobster from 

 March 15th to October 1st, and the minimum size permitted to be 

 sold is a length of 10 inches; a maximum length of 16 inches is also 

 applied here. This is probably a good method of ensuring a high 

 reproductive rate, because a female of 16 inches or over can carry 

 well over 500,000 eggs, while smaller females carry fewer. The 

 restriction of maximum size does not affect the market, because it 

 has been found that the middle-sized lobsters are in the greatest 

 demand. 



Fishermen in Southern Spain practise a different type of regula- 

 tion of their crab fisheries. The male of a local crab, Uca tartgeri, 

 produces a very large chela, which the fishermen snap off and then 

 put the crab back in the sea to grow another; only the claws are 

 sent to market. 



The smaller Crustacea are generally caught in nets, which vary 

 tremendously in design and size in different parts of the world. In 

 Brunei Bay, North Borneo, two men can operate a small boat and a 

 net called a rambat udang, which is cast by hand. This net is made 

 of cotton thread, and is started by making a circle of 35 meshes, a 

 number which is supposed to make the net lucky. The large shrimp 

 industries relv less on luck and use trawl nets up to 135 feet across, 

 operated from trawlers 50-70 feet long and equipped with fatho- 

 meters, navigational aids, radios, and enough ice to keep the 

 shrimps fresh for a couple of weeks. Using nets and boats of this 

 sort the Texas shrimp fishery landed over 79 million pounds of 

 shrimps, mainly Penaeus species, during the season 1954-55. 



