A year in the life of a lobster: Part 3 – Lobsters in spring

Six months ago, I laid out a plan for telling the story of what lobsters do and what temperatures they confront through the seasons based on observations and other data gathered by The Lobster Conservancy’s research programs.

In Parts 1 and 2, I took a balanced approach examining behavior in the Friendship Long Island lobster pound, temperature and movement data gathered from the Sonar Tracking project, and abundance data from the Juvenile Lobster Census.

This poor fellow, a nice two-pounder, was still alive but missing his abdomen when I found him trying to crawl back to the pound.  (Diane Cowan photo)

This poor fellow, a nice two-pounder, was still alive but missing his abdomen when I found him trying to crawl back to the pound. (Diane Cowan photo)

Since then, I’ve realized that each season offers the opportunity to stress what I find most interesting and, perhaps more importantly, what I can share about lobster life that possibly no one else knows.

So, in this installment (Part 3), I focus on predators wreaking havoc in the lobster pound – and in Part 4, the focus will be lobster courtship and mating behavior.

Spring.

Wild predators by the pound exact their heaviest toll on lobsters in early spring.

Here is a little story about my experiences observing how some non-human predators get to the lobsters and my thoughts on why the lobsters may be making themselves more vulnerable.

Sounds of screaming woke me up in the middle of the night.  Some ferocious beasts were fighting outside my window.

Maybe fisher cat versus raccoon.  Hard to say.

I wish I had night vision goggles to peer out and identify the culprits.

I’ve tried spying on nocturnal predators with a motion-activated video camera.

When that didn’t yield results, I pitched a tent on a float in the lobster pound to sleep out there right in the middle of the action…

 

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