CRUSTACEA 291 



the lobster law in your own state and in neighboring states and discuss 

 practical improvements. 1 



Probably no one has ever seen a lobster known to be dead of old 

 age. While specimens over 15 inches long and weighing more than 

 2 or 3 pounds are now rare in the markets, specimens 2 feet in length 

 and weighing 10 pounds were not rare some years ago. The largest 

 lobster on record was caught off the New Jersey coast in 1897. From 

 end of chelae to tip of tail it measured 42 inches, and it weighed 

 34 pounds. Growth has been followed up to the thirty-third year, at 

 which time the lobster is almost 2 feet long. If a lobster lives forty 

 years and produces twenty batches of eggs, averaging 100,000 each, an 

 adult pair would produce 2,000,000 eggs. This would mean, with the 

 species holding its own in the struggle for existence, that under natural 

 conditions only one egg in a million grows to become adult. If man 

 kills the one that nature has preserved out of the million to keep up the 

 species, eggs and young will fail and the lobster will become extinct. 

 Our laws are based on the totally inadequate assumption of the fisher- 

 men that if a lobster is spared until it grows to be 10 inches long and 

 lays only one batch of eggs about 10,000 the population of the 

 species will be maintained. Both theory and experience prove the 

 fallacy of this idea. 



Brooks's law. We must work out a biological^ correct solution of 

 this problem or lose our lobsters. Dr. W. K. Brooks 2 has given a dis- 

 cussion of the problem as applied to marine fishes. This might well be 



1 Rhode Island has led the way by making a closed season, from Novem- 

 ber 15 to April 15. All the states except New York fine from $5 to $100 for 

 killing an egg lobster, but the eggs are easily brushed off. Short-lobster laws 

 differ. In Maine a lobster must measure 4| inches, body length (equal to 

 10 inches long) ; in New Hampshire, 10| inches ; in Massachusetts, 9 inches ; 

 in Rhode Island, 4| inches, body measure ; and in New York, 9 inches. 

 According to the biologically correct view of Dr. Field, of the Massachusetts 

 Fisheries and Game Commission, all these short-lobster laws protect the 

 wrong end of the animal's life. A lobster 10 inches long produces 10,000 

 eggs ; one 12 inches long, 20,000 ; a 16-inch lobster, 100,000. The old lob- 

 ster is thus ten times as valuable to the species for egg production, and, 

 being coarser and tougher, may not be as valuable for food as the legal- 

 limit lobster. According to Field, lobster pots should be made with open- 

 ings too small for the large lobsters to enter, 3 or 3 inches in diameter, and 

 with slats open enough to permit all lobsters under a certain size to escape. 



'^Brooks, "The Artificial Propagation of Sea Fishes," Popular Science 

 Monthly, Vol. XXXV (1889), pp. 359-367. 



