Saving the lobster
Demand for lobsters is increasing – and their wild numbers are falling. Alexandra Pearce reports on an ambitious project in Cornwall that aims to breed and conserve these majestic crustaceans
“ONCE SEEN AS A LUXURY ITEM, LOBSTER IS BECOMING ACCESSIBLE TO MORE PEOPLE”
Lobsters haven’t always been a luxury food. According to Ben Marshall, senior hatchery technician at the National Lobster Hatchery, they used to be fed to prisoners. He tells me this as we stand over a tank filled with female lobsters. “It’s incredible,” he says as he plucks one out and shows me her underbelly, glistening with eggs. “When they were abundant, they weren’t in high demand. As soon as their numbers reduce, everyone wants one.”
There has been a dramatic rise in demand for lobsters. Sales have risen by 90% in recent years and the once-luxury item is becoming accessible to more people. The European lobster usually commands a high price, currently around £17 per kilo, but that hasn’t diminished the public’s love of the shellfish. In the first three months of 2017, 170 tonnes of lobster were landed in the UK, worth a staggering £2.8 million.
Ben is part of the small team at the National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow, which is dedicated to the conservation of the European lobster. The team there hatch, rear and release juvenile European lobsters, as well as research stock enhancement and cultivation techniques, and study the lives and behaviour of these rather mysterious creatures. Research and development manager Dr Carly Daniels has been with the hatchery for more than 13 years. Her passion for the marine environment led her to Cornwall after completing her degree, and in turn to the organisation. “It wasn’t that I decided during university that lobsters were going to be my life, but I have grown to love them. I love the positive impact that my work has on the environment. Whatever I learn can be fed back into the hatchery and, ultimately, to the marine world.”
Carly joined the National Lobster Hatchery a few years after it was established in the late 1990s in an effort to tackle a potential decline in lobster stocks in Cornish waters. Edwin Derriman, the chief sea fisheries officer at the time, noticed a reduction in the numbers of lobsters being landed. This turned out to be temporary, but as it coincided with huge stock collapses in Scandinavian countries, from which the species has yet to recover, it inspired Derriman to take steps to secure the future of European lobsters.
Lobsters are important to Cornwall, as those caught in the county are considered some of the best-tasting specimans and provide an income for many fishermen. Despite changing technology, lobsters are still caught using the traditional method of pots. Today’s pots, however, are more efficient, which has led to overfishing, as the crustaceans are slow to grow.
To combat this, bylaws were introduced, such as minimum catch sizes and the illegal landing of V-notched females. V-notching is a process in which females with eggs – ‘berried hens’ – have a small ‘V’ cut into their tail carapaces. The markings last at least until the next moult, giving the female time to spawn her eggs.
As well as these bylaws, Derriman set up the National Lobster Hatchery and it quickly became Europe’s biggest lobster conservation project. The idea was to improve the understanding of fishery productivity and lobster cultivation, and how such programmes can support the ever-increasing demand for seafood.
CONSERVATION IN ACTION
The hatchery has three main aims: conservation, research and
education. It also has an awardwinning visitor centre that attracts 45,000 people annually. Inside the centre, visitors see the work as it happens, getting up close and personal with the various larvae and some of the resident adult lobsters.
The display tanks give an insight into the aquaculture process. Fishermen bring in berried hens, which are kept in specially designed tanks while their young hatch. For the next few months, larvae are separated into small, individual tanks and fed on plankton. Each stage of their life is defined by their moults. By their third moult, the larvae begin to take on the familiar lobster shape. When they’re around three months old and about an inch in length, they’re ready to be released. The lobsters must be set free close to the seabed so that they can burrow to avoid predators.
Fishermen and divers get involved in releases due to their access to the right locations. “The fishing community has really come on board,” Carly says. “Our programme allows stakeholders to get involved and see the positive outcomes. Some fishermen have told us they’re seeing hundreds of juveniles where we’re releasing and are really excited.”
Defining the success of the project is difficult, however. The hatchery’s survival rates are as much as 40%, but the juveniles are too small to tag when they’re released, so tracking them can be tricky. The centre’s researchers are working on ways to assess their effect more accurately, but for now they rely on anecdotal evidence of increased numbers of juveniles. The team is looking for funding to embark on a new project, named Finding Larry, after one of its residents.
In January 2019, the hatchery team aims to take advantage of an opportunity presented by an existing research project, Lobster Grower 2, involving thousands of lobsters grown under different ecological conditions. The older lobsters will be marked using visible or acoustic tags to monitor their movements, providing an insight into life after release.
The team will also be looking at the potential of using genetic fingerprints to help identify hatchery-reared lobsters post-release.
“It’s a really exciting project; no one has ever done this before,” explains Carly. “It should show us what happens to the lobsters after they leave us.”
RAISED HARD
The hatchery is now expanding and as well as opening a second unit at Newlyn, the Lobster Grower project has been also focusing on animals reared at sea. The lobsters are in similar types of tanks, but in a natural environment.
“They grow very differently,” Carly says. “They’re bigger, darker and definitely feistier.”
This may be because the animals aren’t alone; they’re protected to a degree, but still subject to the natural environment and everything that goes with it, including both predators and prey. This means they’re conditioned to the wild and its changing water quality, food sources and space – changes that can’t be simulated in the hatchery environment. But as well as aiding research into lobster stocks, this project is also deploying artificial reefs, which provide food and shelter for a host of other species.
Despite working with lobsters for well over a decade, Carly is still fascinated by the shellfish and is excited for the future.
“It’s an ever-changing project. The hatchery has evolved while I’ve been here and I can see us moving forward and doing brilliant things. I just think lobsters are amazing; they have their own personalities. Although I do get attached – I have certain lobsters who have lived at the hatchery for several years – I still get a sense of pride when we release them.”
“IT’S A REALLY EXCITING PROJECT; NO ONE HAS EVER DONE THIS BEFORE”