Planetsave

My kids go to an awesome little co-op preschool where my wife Heather runs recruitment. She helped organize a fundraiser last fall where I ended up winning the door prize- a gift certificate for a Lobster dinner for two. It was with one of those dealies that actually ship you the lobsters overnight. I’m really not a big fan of lobster and always had a problem with that first minute after my dad would chuck them into the boiling water when I was a kid so I put the gift certificate on my dresser and pretty much forgot about it.

In the process of packing up the house to get ready for our move (we’re moving down the road to Yarmouth, more to follow on that), Heather found the gift certificate and decided to call it in. She grew up a vegetarian, has never even had lobster, and was admittedly lob-curious.

The next day our friendly overnight delivery man rings the doorbell and leaves the box on the porch.

Somewhere in that box is two lobsters all trussed up with rubber bands waiting to be cooked up.

The whole package comes in a handy dandy cooking pot in a styrofoam cube, complete with corn on the cob, a bag of shimp and cocktail sauce, a stick of butter, and crab bisque. It retails for north of $125 and is just one of a wide selection of live sealife meals that you can have shipped to your door.

By the time we had opened up the box I had decided I’d let my lobster go free. My wife’s resolve in eating hers dissolved when she saw the poor little guys at the bottom of the pot. She got all teary and agreed it’d be a pretty bad bit of bad luck for the poor lobster that got selected as “hers”.

So we packed up the kids and the lobsters and headed off to Mackworth Island, just north of Portland to let them go.

Mackworth Island is a great pick for any Portlanders looking to do their own Lobster Liberation. It’s ironic that anywhere you see lobster traps is a good place to let the little guys go. It means that the ground beneath the waves is the right kind of rocky and that there are other lobsters there to frolic with.

My hope is that my lobsters will spend the rest of their underwater days telling the other lobsters about the dangers of traps. Just Say No to Traps.

Anyways, back to the story.

So we drove out to Mackworth Island and hiked around to the backside to a nice beach.

I peeled off the rubber bands. One of the lobsters responded right away to this, flexing his claws powerfully. The other was more lethargic, having taken the trauma of being trapped and shipped a little harder.

I paused to grab a quick photo of me and the lobsters, and gently placed them into the water.

Flexy, the stronger of the two lobsters, took off right away. He hung out in the general area for about 10 minutes and then took off out of sight. The other lobster took longer to shake off the effects of his run-in with humanity. It was a good 15-20 minutes before he started really moving around. By the time we left the beach Heather reported that he was moving around like Flexy, if a bit creakier.

If you would like to learn more about liberating your own lobster you can visit Lobster Liberation. They don’t recommend you buy lobsters to set them free as you end up just supporting the lobster industry. If you are given a lobster (or win them as a door prize), here are some tips

I was given a lobster. How can I set him or her free?
Lobsters are very delicate, so always handle them with care to ensure that you don’t accidentally break one of their legs or claws.
• Do not place lobsters in fresh water—it will kill them.
• Hold them gently. You must support lobsters’ bodies as well as their claws so that their joints won’t be stressed.
• Carefully cut the rubber bands off their claws—never pull or yank the bands off, as that could damage their claws (or even rip them off!).
• Don’t release lobsters into just any part of the ocean. Make sure that there are other lobsters in the area. You’ll also want to release them away from lobster pots.
• Don’t just toss them in! Gently release them as far in as you can wade.

On the question of whether Lobsters feel pain, here’s what Lobster Liberation has to say about it- it’s not a pretty picture…

“As an invertebrate zoologist who has studied crustaceans for a number of years, I can tell you the lobster has a rather sophisticated nervous system that, among other things, allows it to sense actions that will cause it harm. … [Lobsters] can, I am sure, sense pain.”
—Jaren G. Horsley, Ph.D.

Contrary to claims made by seafood sellers, there is little doubt anymore that lobsters, like all animals, can feel pain. Most scientists agree that a lobster’s nervous system is quite sophisticated. For example, neurobiologist Tom Abrams says lobsters have “a full array of senses.” Jelle Atema, a marine biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and one of the country’s leading experts on lobsters, says, “I personally believe they do feel pain.”

Lobsters may even feel more pain than we would in similar situations. One popular food magazine recently suggested cutting live lobsters in half before tossing them on the grill (a recipe that’s “not for the squeamish,” the magazine warned), and more than one chef has been known to slice and dice lobsters before cooking them. But, says invertebrate zoologist Jaren G. Horsley, “The lobster does not have an autonomic nervous system that puts it into a state of shock when it is harmed. It probably feels itself being cut. … I think the lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open … [and] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed” during cooking.

I’m an imperfect Environmentalist- I was a vegetarian for six years or so but now eat meat again. I grew up in a family known for striving to serve up as many different animals at Thanksgiving as possible and I had a kickass chicken burrito the other day. I know how bad eating meat is, I’m imperfect- who isn’t?

But there is just something wrong about throwing a living animal into a pot of boiling water to eat it. And don’t give me that bullshit about putting them to sleep before you put them in the pot. If you fell into a pot of boiling water when you were asleep do you think you would snooze through?

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