ABOUT LOBSTERS 101 



ster season, depending on the prevailing temperatures— the 

 cooler the water, the longer the lobsters will keep." This is 

 more often than the once a year Maine recommends, but 

 these Danish experiments circulated much less water. 



Filtration is an important part of processing artificial 

 sea water. It was considered essential to the commercial 

 lobster aquariums which have been promoted. Removal of 

 fish dung is believed to be very important in goldfish tanks, 

 and perhaps salt water snails in a lobster aquarium would 

 clean the water as they are supposed to do in goldfish tanks. 

 Yet the Danish experiments clearly show that strong 

 pollutions of dung do not affect the lobsters so long as 

 enough oxygen is present. In contradiction, it is believed by 

 many lobster dealers that the dung of lobsters can kill other 

 lobsters lying in the lower layers in a shipping container. 

 This is a reason for keeping freshly caught lobsters in a 

 tank for at least one day so that their bowels may be 

 emptied. 



Dr. Thomas in his " Lobster Storage " says: 



When lobsters have been in air, as when travelling, 

 the dung builds up inside of them. In summer this ac- 

 cumulation may be considerable. The dung will be 

 thrown off when the lobsters are put into water. In 

 consequence, if possible, lobsters should not be put 

 into re-circulating water after travelling but first given 

 an hour or so in fresh sea water. (Such treatment is 

 hardly possible in inland installations. ) A weak lobster 

 stands a better chance of survival if it is lowered slowly 

 into the water tail first so that the water can flood 

 gently through the gill chamber, thereby avoiding air 

 locks. 6 



Maine used a cloth filter of Lumite, a plastic cloth with 

 36 threads to the inch and a porosity of .008 inches. It did 

 not filter out much of the suspended matter. Enough re- 

 mained to give a slight turbidity to the water. 



8 Published by the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen, Scotland. 



