A Home for a Lobster
Most of us have eaten a lobster at least once in our life. We know they're weird-looking critters, but have you ever thought about where they come from or what type of habitat they live in? There were so many of them around during colonial times that our ancestors could pick them up by hand in ocean tide pools, even though they weren't considered proper food for anyone but the poor. Now they're an expensive delicacy which are actively farmed in order to provide for the huge demand.
A lobster newborn doesn't look much like his parents. Mother lobsters lay as many as 10,000 eggs, and if this lobster baby is real lucky, he'll be one of the 10 out of that number that lives to maturity. The mortality rate is exceptionally high amongst lobster babies. Many of them get eaten during their first two weeks of life while living in the upper three feet of the ocean. During this stage of his life, he will molt three times.
Once the baby lobster has reached stage four, he has learned to swim well. He will spend this stage looking for a permanent place to live on the ocean floor. In the coastal regions around Cape Cod, he will pick out a home in the salt marsh peat. In coastal waters around Maine, his preference will be an area with cobble (small rocks) on the bottom.
Cobble is an exceptionally suitable habitat for lobsters. There are many crevices and cracks around and under the small rocks that make up the cobble which offers him places to hide and wait for his food to come to him. While many coastal regions offer rocky bottoms, Maine is ideal in that it also has just what lobsters like, clean, cold water.
Shortly after he molts for his fifth time, he moves to the new location he has found on the ocean bottom. For the first year or so in his new residence, he remains hidden in his tunnel or crevice so that his predators can't find him. As he gets a little larger, say after his first year there, he begins to hide in the kelp and search for food. He'll continue to do this for another three years.
Before reaching maturity our lobster will seldom attempt to swim out in the open ocean. His survival instincts tell him that it isn't safe there, and he's right. If he ventured out too far, he'd be eaten within minutes. Only when he reaches maturity does he make another move which will most like be to an area with larger rocks. Other choice residences can be in sandy or muddy areas reaching out to the edge of the continental shelf. He always looks for a one-lobster dig, because he prefers to be alone.
Wherever there are lobsters, there will be fishermen. Between the fishermen and natural predators, most lobsters don't live very long lives. However, historically some lobsters have been noted to have achieved larger sizes and longer life spans. Colonials, for example, recorded that some of the lobsters they found were five or six feet in length.
During modern times, the largest lobster on record was caught off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1977. This monster lobster was between three and four feet long and weighed 44 lbs., 6 oz. He was thought to have been around 100 years old. Believe it, or not!