The Secret Life of Lobsters Read Online Free PDF

exaggerated. But storms could blow lobsters onto beaches by the hundreds, making them a convenient source of feed or fertilizer for coastal farms, and most scholars agree that lobster was generally considered a low-class dish for human consumption. After their first winter in Plymouth, a group of Pilgrims on an expedition to what is now Boston Harbor gladly helped themselves to fresh lobsters that had been piled on the beach by Native Americans. By the following year, however, the leader of thePilgrims, William Bradford, reported shame at having to serve lobster in lieu of more respectable fare.
    By the seventeenth century, the word “lobster” had even developed a derogatory usage in speech—calling someone a lobster was like calling him a rascal. One English source from 1609 gives an example: “you whorson Lobster.” During the American revolution, the word was a put-down for British redcoats, and in American slang of the late 1800s it was used to call someone a dupe or a fool.
    Despite these connotations, fishermen along the New England coast ate lobster, though primarily out of economic necessity—the fish they caught were too valuable at the market to consume, while lobster was nearly worthless. Gradually the lobster’s status improved, and its meat became desirable fare for well-off urbanites. By the early nineteenth century, American fishermen were catching lobsters commercially with a type of net hanging from an iron hoop and shaped like a cauldron—one origin of the term “pot,” still used today to refer to a trap. Traps of wood and twine were far more efficient than nets and caught on in New England in the 1840s.
    For Bruce Fernald’s forefathers, building twenty or thirty traps could take all winter. The men hauled spruce from the forest and sawed it into sills, then stripped green branches and soaked them in a round washtub to make the arched bows that gave the traps their curved tops. The women who had been foolish enough to marry these men sat by the stove knitting mesh funnels and bait bags from twine. Then the men boiled vats of coal tar and cooked the twine to fortify it against decomposition. While the tar was hot they measured lengths of rope made from Manila hemp or sisal plants and cooked them too.
    The buoys they carved from tree trunks, each man painting his floats a signature color. Just before they set a trap they loaded it with beach stones so it would sink; after a week or two the wood would be waterlogged enough that they could remove some of the rocks. And then on a good day each man piled as many traps as he could into a dory, rowed out to wherehe thought the lobsters were, and threw the traps overboard. When he hauled a trap back up and found lobsters in it, he noted its location and reminded himself to lie about it when he returned to the island.
    For a hundred years the Fernalds mostly set their traps on rocky bottom, where they believed the lobsters liked to hide. Occasionally a storm would churn up the sea and drag the wooden traps to new locations, often off the rocks and into mud valleys several miles away. After the storm the Fernalds would head out in their boats to search for their gear. When they found a trap they were relieved, whether it contained lobsters or not. Still, as the years passed, the lobstermen began to notice an odd phenomenon. Sometimes the traps they retrieved from the mud seemed to contain more lobsters than the traps that had stayed on the rocks. Perhaps the animals had been frightened into the muddy valleys by the raging currents of the storm.
    By the time Bruce Fernald was fishing with his father, a new theory had developed. Perhaps the lobsters used the rocks for hiding, but the mud for migrating. It was a theory Bruce grew increasingly eager to put into practice for himself.
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    Jack Merrill’s family lived in suburban Massachusetts. His parents brought him to Little Cranberry Island before he was a year old, and