A METHOD OF LOBSTER CULTURE. 
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By A. D. MEAD, Ph. D., 
Member of the Rhode Island Commission of Inland Fisheries. 
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THE PROBLEM. 
Artifical breeding ought not to be content to do at its best only what nature does 
unaided. It obtains its real justification only when it is in a position to surpass nature 
in her achievements. Only thus can it accomplish the task set it—to fill up the gaps 
caused by years of excessive fishing. (Professor Ehrenbaum, in Mitteilungen des 
Deutschen Seefischereivereins, Bd. 23, Juni 1907.—Translated.) 
In the case of the lobster, nature has made adequate provision for the 
protection of the eggs up to the very time they are hatched. As is well 
known, the eggs laid in July or later in the summer or in the early fall are 
carried attached to the swimmerets under the abdomen of the female lobster, 
and there are protected until the following June or July, when they hatch out 
(fig. 9, pl. x1). The young lobsters, also, when they have successfully passed 
through three moults and have attained the so-called ‘bottom stages” are 
equipped with structures and instincts which fit them exceedingly well for holding 
their own in the struggle for existence; but there intervenes between the hatching 
and the attainment of the first bottom stage a brief period of two or three 
weeks in which the young lobsters, having lost utterly the protection of the 
mother animals, and not yet having acquired either the structure or the instinct 
which would give them a reasonable degree of individual security, are exposed 
and helpless to an extraordinary degree. 
Those who have studied the question of lobster culture agree that this 
short interval may properly be called the ‘‘critical period” in the lobster’s 
life—the one in which occurs by far the greatest mortality. That the species 
has maintained itself without diminution (until the recent inroads by man) in 
spite of this unprotected period may be explained by the enormous productivity 
of the individuals. A lobster of ordinary size—say 12 inches—produces at one 
time, according to Herrick, an average of about 20,000 eggs, which are so well 
protected that practically all of them hatch. This excessive productivity, how- 
ever, though a potent means of protection to the species, affords no protection 
to the individuals. 
