BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OP FISHERIES. 
170 
Even when every edible part of this animal was saved, which is seldom or never done, 
the total waste was found to be 45 per cent, and the cost of all edible parts 45 cents per 
pound. At the present retail prices of from 30 to 35 cents per pound, these estimates 
would have to be considerably increased. 
GEOGRAPHICAL RANGE OF THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 
The American lobster {Homarus americanus) is found only on the eastern coast of 
North America. Its geographical range covers about twenty degrees of north latitude, 
from the thirty-fifth to the fifty-second parallel, and embraces a strip of the North 
Atlantic Ocean i ,300 miles long and 30 to 50 miles wide, and according to one estimate 
7,000 miles in length when measured along the curves of the shore. Its vertical distri- 
bution varies from i to over 100 fathoms. The most northern point at which its capture 
has been recorded is Henley Harbor, Labrador (209) ; the most southern point, the coast 
of North Carolina.® Since the fishery was begun on the southern New England coast 
and was gradually extended northward, it is not surprising to find the lobster at the 
present time not only more abundant but attaining the greatest average size in the north- 
erly parts of its range — in eastern Maine and the Maritime Provinces. It should be 
noted, however, that three of the largest lobsters captured in recent years are from New 
Jersey. (See fig. i and table i, p. 195.) 
HISTORY AND IMPORTANCE OF THE LOBSTER FISHERIES IN BRIEF. 
According to Dr. Richard Rathbun (227), who was the first to give us a history of 
the American lobster fisheries, this fishery as a separate industry began toward the close 
of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century, and was first developed 
on the coast of Massachusetts and in the region of Cape Cod and Boston, some fishing 
being “done as early as 1810 among the Elizabeth Islands and on the coast of Connect- 
icut.” “Strangely enough, this industry was not extended to the coast of Maine, 
where it subsequently attained its greatest proportions, until about 1840.” 
The early white men learned many lessons in fishing from the Indians, and those 
living upon the coast in the course of time began to supply settlers more remote, until 
the Cape Cod region, having become famous, attracted fishermen with their smacks from 
Connecticut and from other states, and furnished most of the lobsters consumed both 
in Boston and New York for fifty years, or until the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. In 1812, as Dr. Rathbun remarks, the citizens of Provincetown, realizing the 
danger of exhausting their fishing grounds, succeeded in having a protective law enacted 
through the state legislature, apparently the first but not the last of its kind, for legal 
restrictions, including this statute, have been in force ever since. But this measure 
was designed to protect the fishermen rather than the lobster, for it was merely declared 
“ So far as known, the lobster has been taken but four times on the North Carolina coast during the pastforty years, namely; 
One lobster in 1870 at Beaufort; one dredged by the Albatross in 1884 off Cape Hatteras in 30 fathoms: one said tohave measured 
18 inches, caught in a gill net at Nags Head in 1903 and exhibited for some time as a curiosity at Elizabeth, Virginia; and another, 
as noted by J. N. Cobb, was caught by a fisherman at Oregon Inlet, presumably not far from the latter date. For the last two 
notices I am indebted to Dr. H. M. Smith of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries. 
