LOBSTERS AND THE LOBSTER PROBLEM IN MASSACHUSETTS, 215 
the fishermen had of doing it. A lobster must as the law required measure 104 inches 
from the end of the nose to the rear end of the tail shell. Nowa lobster is in two 
sections, practically, so that he can be pulled out or shoved in; and if a fisherman wanted 
to make a lobster “go” that was a little short, he would give it a little wrench or pull 
and it would stay out. Then he would say to the buyer, ‘‘Measure him again;”’ and 
the lobster would be found to be all right. That was a very bad practice, and by it we 
have lost a great many lobsters. The fellow that caught the lobster might be able to 
sell it, but in a day or so the man who bought it would have a dead lobster instead of a 
live one. So we adopted a new law. A lobster now must be measured from the end of 
the nose to the rear end of the body shell. This is one solid shell, and there is no way 
to pull it up or stretch it in any way, so that 434 inches is the measure now, which is 
approximately the same 10% inches, but measured in a different way. 
Last year, as I say, we caught of that size of lobsters between 8,000,000 and 9,000,000 
pounds; and the value of them, as received by the fishermen, who are the first hands, 
was a little less than $2,000,000. 
We have a method of propagating in Maine which is a little different from that in 
Massachusetts, inasmuch as we buy the seed-bearing lobsters, or egg-bearing, as we call 
it, from the fishermen and pay 25 per cent more for them than the fishermen can get 
from the market man for the regular legal lobster. We do that to make it an object for 
the men to save every one of those seed-bearing lobsters, as we do not want to lose a 
single one. 
The lobster is very prolific, producing from 25,000 to 80,000 seeds at a batch. They 
are great breeders. If they had not been, our lobsters would have been exterminated 
long ago. 
By the way, I want to say that some lobster fishermen do not think it is a good plan 
to have these fish hatched artificially. They believe the best way is to throw them over 
into the natural element and let them do their own hatching. If the fisherman objects 
to our taking them, we say, ‘“‘ We will buy the lobster; and you may throw it overboard in 
the ocean, and if you catch that lobster to-morrow we will buy it again.” But in order 
to find out how much we were getting “‘stuck’’ on that proposition, we took a small punch 
and punched the thin part of the tail. This does not hurt the lobster. We mark it, 
and in that way we keep tab on how many times we buy the same lobster in the same 
year. In one case we rebought a lobster four times, but very seldom do we buy one the 
second time. 
We take those that the fishermen do not object to our carrying to the hatchery. 
We have a hatchery in the state, owned by the United States Government, at Boothbay 
Harbor, and they hatch all the lobsters that we can get forthem. The State pays us the 
price that we pay for the lobsters, or the market price of the lobsters. Those lobsters are 
held in pounds throughout the winter and hatched the following spring, and last year 
(1907) the hatchery at Boothbay Harbor hatched and liberated on the coast of Maine 
approximately 140,000,000 of those small lobsters. They are taken out after they are 
able to swim around pretty well and take fairly good care of themselves and liberated in 
the coves, up in the mouths of the rivers, where the water is not too fresh, and some out 
in the ocean. It is more or less a question as to the best way to propagate the lobster, 
and how to get the best results. After the little fellows are once liberated, why, of course, 
we do not know any more about them, excepting the results we get the next season or two 
seasons after in fishing. We have been following that plan now for a number of years— 
it has been ten years—and our fishing last year showed a marked increase; the year 
before a slight increase. For this year the statistics are not entirely made up, yet as far 
as we have gone it appears that we are going to get a very fair increase in the 
catch of lobsters. The 9-inch law which is in force in Massachusetts and Rhode Island 
and the Provinces is more or less trouble among our fishermen, from the fact that a 
fisherman is more or less greedy; when he gets something that he has picked up out of 
the water he is apt to want to sell it; and we have enforced the law by making it a pen- 
