THE ETHICAL CARNIVORE
Louise Gray learns the best was to exterminate a lobster
Afew years ago, I was walking along my favourite beach at Seacliff in East Lothian (where else?), when I came across my cousin, Jack Dale. He had just returned from pulling up creels and generously offered me a lobster. It looked delicious but I politely declined, explaining l was going back to London on the train that very afternoon.
‘Ach, just put him on the seat next to you and you’ll get the whole carriage!’ he laughed.
I took the lobster home and asked Granny to cook it. She refused, which was a surprise. My Granny was a farmer’s wife capable of gutting pheasants and cutting up rabbits, but she was being squeamish about a shellfish? ‘ Oh, it’s horrible,’ she said. ‘Tell me when you are going to do it, I don’t want to be in the room.’
I’m ashamed to say I threw the lobster in a pan of boiling water and then ran out of the kitchen, so I didn’t hear the ‘screams’ – or the whistle of air escaping the body cavity.
Jack was right – I got the whole carriage – and that night, when I arrived back in London, I had great fun sharing out the cooked lobster in a beer garden in Camden. But Granny was right too – killing a lobster is a horrible business.
They may officially be invertebrates, more insect than fluffy animal. They may not have the ability to process pain – according to some scientists – or the vocal chords to actually scream, but by God they are beautiful.
The next time you treat yourself to a lobster take time to examine the creature. Look at the delicate hem of blue around the fanned tail, the huge robotic claws, the antennae tentatively feeling their way through their underwater world. And then think: they can live for up to 100 years. All of the above made me think about how a lobster is caught and killed. I concluded it would be the perfect start to my year of eating only animals I have killed myself. After all, the whole idea is to take time to understand and to take responsibility for the meat we eat.
I went back to Seacliff and found Jack still
hauling in creels f rom t he North Sea. He greeted me in a sweatshirt given to him by the crew of his local RNLI lifeboat when his boat sank off North Berwick about a year ago.
Fortunately, I went out lobstering with Jack’s son Robbie, who has not sunk a boat – yet – and Sam Lowe. It is hard physical work, winching out up to five creels at a time, but both young men say they love their job.
We have a glorious day puttering around the East Lothian coast amid the eider ducks and seals. Cormorants dry their wings on the rocks and gannets whizz past carrying seaweed back to their nests on the Bass Rock.
Smaller lobsters that have not reached the legal landing size are thrown back, as are any other species such as red kelp cod, spiky sea urchins and a vibrating sea scorpion. It is a reminder of the rich life beneath the waves.
The next part of the journey is not so enjoyable. I am told the most humane way to kill a lobster is to stab it through the carapace. Ewan MacMichael, otherwise known as ‘The Lobinator’, a kitchen porter at North Berwick’s Nether Abbey Hotel, shows me how to do it correctly.
We take a cooled lobster that has been kept at low temperature for a few hours to make it unconscious and lay it on the block. The ‘Lobinator’ gives me a large heavy knife and instructs me to stab down quickly and cut forwards through the head, then backwards splitting the whole body. It is over so fast and the lobster is so cold and unmoving, I don’t have time to think.
I feel a little worse when I get down to the Lobster Shack in North Berwick and grill the lobster. Just as when you boil the crustacean, air escapes the body cavity making a ghostly whistle and the claws move as they are grilled.
However, with some garlic butter and chips the lobster is transformed into a meal. Sitting on North Berwick harbour wall eating my supper, I reflected on all the positive things that happened to bring this food to my plate.
In the past, Jack exported all the lobsters he caught to Spain, as Scottish people rejected their own home-caught seafood for fish fingers and burgers. But now, thanks to Lobster Shack and other Scottish restaurants pushing local produce, he sells them here. It is not only better for the welfare of the lobsters, which are no longer transported across Europe, but for Scots eating fresh shellfish as opposed to junk food.
What about sustainability I hear you ask? Could we overfish for lobster?
Of course, but Jack and his fellow fishermen have had more forethought than most. With a grant from the Coastal Communities Fund they have set up the Firth of Forth Lobster Hatchery in North Berwick. ‘Berried hens’, or female lobsters carrying eggs, are brought back by the fishermen so the eggs can be reared in tanks. Nine to 12 months later tiny baby lobsters the size of a fingernail hatch. In the wild only 0.05% would survive predation but in the tanks most survive and at 12 weeks old they are returned to the sea. In other countries the lobster population has collapsed due to overfishing and it has been impossible to bring the species back. ‘Lobster ranching’ ensures a healthy population can be sustained.
In the future, people should be able to go out with Jack to see the hatchery, pull up a creel and then enjoy a delicious lobster.
It is such a positive story of Scottish provenance and proves a key message in my book: killing an animal may be an unpleasant experience, but taking the effort to find out where it has been sourced and ensuring it is from a sustainable population makes it taste better.
‘I threw the lobster in a pan of boiling water and then ran out of the kitchen, so I didn’t hear the scream’