| Lobster: Feast from the Sea |
by Lisa B. Martin
The mention of langosta, or lobster, immediately conjures up images of a mouth-watering delicacy served in a seaside restaurant. Visitors to Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa can find the local Pacific spiny lobster on the menu of many establishments, as well as in the fish stall of Zihua’s Mercado Central.
For the traveling gourmet and fisherman, it is interesting to compare the American lobster – caught in the cold waters of New England and Canada - with the local spiny variety. Not only are these oceanic cousins different in flavor, but the habitats, the fishing procedures, and the future of this now-precious arthropod species hangs precipitously in balance.
Let’s start with taste: the American lobster is sweeter, more tender, and looks quite different as is it smooth-shelled without large spines. Its large front claws are especially tasty, and there is also plentiful meat in the body cavity and side legs. The spiny lobster has no large front claws, so primarily the tail is consumed. Steamed, grilled or broiled, the preparation process for both varieties is about the same: grilled eight to 10 minutes on each side, or boiled 10-12 minutes per pound. Local restaurants, such as La Gaviota at the end of La Ropa beach, serve spiny lobster a variety of tasty ways: moho de aho (with garlic butter); mantequilla (steamed with butter); plancha (grilled plain); Mexicana style (with chopped tomatoes onion, and carrots; or diabla (with a salsa of hot chiles). La Gaviota also offers longosta albondigas (meatballs) and tacos.
Delicioso y Precioso (Delicious and Costly)
In a restaurant or a fish market both the American and spiny lobster varieties are expensive. Prices fluctuate with the seasons, and with supply and demand. Locally the market price for spiny langosta is now about $150 pesos per kilo (35 ounces); and the prices in restaurants vary but can be over $300.00 pesos per kilo, prepared. On a recent day in the Zihuatanejo Mercado Central fish market, a kilo was 3 medium spiny lobsters, caught the previous day, and sold dead but iced. In November, when the fishing was more plentiful and the tourist demand lower, this author was offered a large live 1 kilo lobster for only 10 pesos ($1 dollar!) by a roadside fisherman north of Majahua.
In the U.S. and Canada, the American lobster is only sold live, usually from tanks, and retail cost varies from lows of $6.99 - $8.99 per pound in the seafood markets of Massachusetts and Maine, to upwards of $12.99 - $14.99 per pound in super markets across North America. A boiled or baked-stuffed lobster dinner in a restaurant can cost from $25.00 USD to as much as $50.00 USD, depending upon locale.
Of interest is the fact that, prior to the nineteenth century, only widows, orphans and servants ate lobster in the USA. In some places in New England, serving lobster to prison inmates more than once a week was forbidden by law, and considered cruel and unusual punishment.*
Today, tourist and restaurant demand drives the lobster market in the US and Mexico. The methods of fishing for spiny and American lobsters differs greatly, affecting their arrival to market and to restaurants. Fishing techniques and regulations will also determine the future availability of lobsters, as well as the price.
Over-fishing is the single biggest problem of the local spiny lobster, according to marine biologist Juan Manual Barnard Avila, owner of Hotel Paraiso Real and the Zihua Scuba center on Playa la Ropa. The Mexican government does have some regulations for lobster fishing here but they are nearly impossible to enforce says Avila’s associate, Efraim Garcia Villalvarzo, an oceanographer trained at the University of Avronoma in Baja California. The four-person, non-traveling staff of SAGRPA, the Secretaria de Agricultura Ganardaria y Pesca, is responsible for enforcing fishing regulations. Fisherman are not supposed to take lobsters during mating season, from June 1st to September 15th. They are also not supposed to take egg-bearing females or lobsters under ½ a kilo, about one pound.
Traditionally, the nocturnally active spiny lobsters are caught at night. Flashlights reflect off their eyes and spines making them easy to detect in water as deep as 3 meters; about 10 feet. Divers retrieve them using a gancha, a barbed hook, which is often speared through the lobster, killing it quickly. Some lobsters are taken live, using sticks and gloves. Pollution does not seem to affect Pacific lobsters, as most habitats are in rocky areas, versas bays, where currents are strong. Fisherman sell the freshly caught langosta to local restaurants and fish markets where they can be kept fresh only 1-2 days on ice or in refrigeration.
How Much is Too Much ?
Supply and demand has lead Mexican fisherman to develop inventive techniques that are causing dangerous over-fishing. Boats in Acapulco and other places where demand is high equip themselves with air compressors used in commercial painting (!), adapt it to a gasoline motor, and rig up a regulator. Divers can fish for many hours or all night, taking as many lobsters as they can find, often regardless of size - let alone the health risks of such homemade breathing apparatus. In Majahua, I asked how much a local fisherman typically takes in one night using more traditional manual methods and the answer was about 10 kilos.
In Mexico City, there is a gigantic central fish market, Le Nueve Biga, that also controls the price and availability of much Mexican lobster, as well as other seafood such as abalone and shrimp. Much spiny lobster is caught in the Baja area at Cedros Island, in the Yucatan, and in the State of Sonora. Powerful distributors at Le Nueva Biga buy up this fresh caught lobster, freeze it, and then control shipments and prices to large restaurant centers such as Acapulco, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, and even Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa.
When offered langosta in local restaurants, you might inquire whether it was caught locally or shipped frozen, as this may affect both the cost and the taste. Try to avoid buying lobsters that are under ½ kilo (1 lb), as taking of these younger lobsters affects future breeding stock and is illegal.
It’s the Law
In the US and Canada, strictly enforced regulations and cooperation among fisheries and regulators are helping to revive the once over-fished American lobster population. Currently taking of lobster is allowed year ‘round, though fishing is much lighter in the breeding months of June and July when lobsters are in hiding (then called “soft shelled” or “shedders”), as they shed their shells annually for the mating and growth process.
In Massachusetts and Maine, it is illegal to take lobsters who carapace length (measured from the eye socket to the beginning of the tail) is less than 3 ¼ inches, or no greater than 5. Egg-bearing females cannot be taken, nor can a “v-notched” lobster. This is a female lobster that was previously egg-bearing, caught by a lobsterman, and marked by knife with a small notch on one of her tail fins. Heavy fines and the enforcement of size laws by fishery police and inspectors have helped revive the lobster populations and keep fishermen in business, too.
While some American lobsters are caught by non-commercial divers who must obey these same regulations, most are caught in wire mesh rectangular-shaped traps that are submerged in twenty to hundreds of feet of water, depending upon the season and the size of vessel retrieving the traps. In Massachusetts, a non-commercial license can be purchased annually for $40, and up to ten traps can be used. A licensed commercial fisherman can fish as many as 500 traps. Traps also most comply with safety requirements, now having small escape doors that are secured by plastic hog rings that will biodegrade in about 6 months if a trap become lost at sea (in fishing lingo, these are called “ghost traps”). Traps also have hard plastic vents that allow smaller undersized lobsters to exit a trap at will.
Traps weigh between 40 and 55 pounds, cost fully equipped about $40-50.00 USD, and are balance weighted with 3 to 4 masonry bricks to keep them laying flat on the ocean floor. A line, called a warp, connects the trap to the surface buoy, which displays the lobsterman’s chosen colors and his or her license number. The trap is also marked with this number. It is illegal to fish or to touch another man’s gear, and it is proper ocean etiquette to place one’s traps a safe distance from others to avoid entanglement of warps. Lobstermen can place their traps anywhere but in a marked harbor channel. (I fish my ten traps off the northern coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts almost within spitting distance of shore, using 40’ warps in 10-20 feet of water that changes with a 12-15’ tide).
To invite the lobsters in, a small bag of bait, typically holding 2-3 hunks of fresh or salted herring, is suspended in one side of the 2-room trap, called “the parlor” or “the bedroom”. Lobsters enter the other side of the trap, “the kitchen”, through “heads” or trap openings that are lined with 1’ net webbing, made of plastic twine and formed in the shape of a funnel or cone. Other sea critters come in too: crabs, sea urchins, starfish, skates, even flounder in search of a free meal. These are removed along with the lobsters, when the traps are hauled, either by hand (my method) or by electric winch, and the main trap door is opened. It only takes a few hours for lobsters to find a baited trap, but traps are typically hauled every 24 to 48 hours so fresh bait can be placed in, catch removed, and the cannibalistic lobsters prevented from snacking on their trap mates. A good haul is 1-3 “keepers” per trap; “shorts” or “snappers” (undersized lobsters) are tossed back in. “Preachers” (lobsters with no claws), and “culls” (lobster missing one claw) can be taken as long as their body length meets regulations. Using a special banding tool, rubber bands are placed on the lobsters claws to prevent them from attacking the lobsterman, and each other.
How Old is That Lobster?
An American lobster that reaches minimum the legal size of about 1 ¼ pounds is known as a “chicken” lobster, and is about 7-8 eight years old. A Mexican spiny lobster that is ½ kilo (1 lb) with a tail length of 4 inches is about 1 1/2 to 2 years old. For both varieties, rate of grown depends on water temperature and food supply. Clearly the American lobster living in the icy cold waters of the Atlantic loses (or wins?) in the race to the table.
Both varieties of lobster have similar mating processes and seasons, shedding their hard outer shells in July and August, and breeding during that same time. A female ready to breed releases pheromones to attract males. She selects the male, and allows him to deposit sacks of sperm near her birth canal, under the tail. She then decides in a few days to release her eggs, which are fertilized by these sacks. The spiny lobster carries her 300 – 500,000 eggs only a few days before releasing them. These almost microscopic kite shaped infant larvae free float, feeding on plankton for 1-2 weeks, before changing shape and sinking to the sea bottom. A delicious food source for other sea critters, only 1-3 will make it to adulthood; the ½ kilo size.
The female American lobster carries her 20,000 eggs for nine to eleven months before releasing the larvae, where they float within a meter from the surface two to four weeks. They then drop to the ocean floor, finding a place to hide for about four years. Only about ten will survive to adulthood, or edible size.
Next time your order a lobster, here, in the States or in Canada, remember how precious this resource truly is - especially when you get the bill!
Lisa Martin is a writer and lobsterwoman hailing from Gloucester, Massachusetts and in residence in Zihuatanejo until May 2003. Reach her at lisa@lisabmartin.com or Mexican cell 044-755-10-01173.
Sources: Thanks to marine biologist Juan Manual Barnard Avila, owner of Hotel Paraiso Real and the Zihua Scuba center on Playa la Ropa, and his associate oceanographer Efraim Garcia Villalvarzo. And Juan Flores & Ma. Aguilar Osorio of Pescaderia “Matitha”, Mercado Central stall #203, for letting us photograph their lobsters.
January 2003
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