Canada’s ‘ liberated’ lobsters worry U. K. biologists
Live Canadian lobsters are mysteriously turning up in U. K. traps, and British fishermen and biologists suspect that the imported crustaceans are being illegally “liberated” into the North Sea.
“I really hope Canadian lobsters don’t become established here,” wrote Magnus Johnson, a marine biologist at the University of Hull, in an email.
Canadian lobsters are faster, stronger and more aggressive than their Old World counterparts, meaning the foreigners could cause widespread ecological damage if they are allowed to get a toehold in British waters.
On Monday, U. K. fishing authorities came upon a female North American lobster in a holding tank in Hartlepool, a town on England’s northeast coast. Earlier this year, another foreign lobster showed up across the North Sea in Gullmar Fjord, Sweden.
“They are found occasionally near Bridlington [ a shellfishing port on the coast of Yorkshire],” Mike Cohen, a member of the Holderness Fishing Industry Group, told The Telegraph.
He added that local suspicion pointed to the creatures being dropped overboard by passing cruise ships: “Passengers buy a lobster from the live tanks and then ask the waiter to throw them overboard rather than eating it. Another possibility is that they are escaping or being discarded from the restaurants which import live lobsters.”
The exact species is the Homarus americanus, a lobster found exclusively on the eastern coast of North America. A smaller cousin, the Homarus gammarus, makes its home in European waters.
In addition, the U. K. happens to currently be awash in a flood of cheap lobsters from Canada.
Bolstered by a strong pound and a bumper Canadian harvest, British supermarkets are currently selling Maritime lobsters for as little as $ 9 apiece.
The U. K’s Wildlife and Countryside Act makes it illegal to release non- native species into British lands and waters, but foreign lobsters have been turning up off the English coast ever since the U. K. ramped up air imports of live Atlantic shellfish in the 1980s.
A 2012 study found that between 1988 and 2011, 26 North American lobsters were caught off the U. K. coast. Although, that number is “almost certainly an underestimate.”
As for what is driving this mysterious migration, the culprit is most likely the escape or release of lobsters destined for European dinner tables.