Lobster Bodega

Mass-produced delight

No other delicacy from the sea seems to excite American palates as much as Homarus americanus, more familiarly known as the lobster. Americans consumed some 50 million lbs. last year, and recent OPEC-style price increases in the retail cost of lobsters (up 145% per Ib. since 1969) have not curbed the U.S. appetite for the clawed crustaceans. By 1985 the National Marine Fisheries Service projects nearly a doubling of demand, to about 90 million lbs. But where will these lobsters come from?

Marine biologists point out that lobsters are already being dangerously overfished. Off New England, lobster "pots" --the bait-loaded wooden traps used to snare the creatures--are so densely packed on the ocean floor that a lobster can barely move without bumping into one. Farther offshore, foreign fishermen have been using more sophisticated dredges to scoop up lobsters. In all too many cases, young females are removed before they have had a chance to reproduce; often they are taken under the typical state legal limit of 3 3/16 in. from eye socket to the beginning of the tail, a restraint that may still be too lax, according to scientists. The result: a dwindling lobster catch even in such once fertile waters as those off Maine.

To replenish the threatened supply, scientists have long dreamed of raising lobsters. But lobster culture has so far never passed the experimental stage. The obstacles are formidable. In the wild, it takes lobsters five to eight years to reach maturity. Even when the females begin laying eggs, only about one in every batch of 10,000 survives; the larvae fall prey to a host of natural predators. To complicate the job of would-be lobster farmers, the creatures must be kept apart: in captivity they show as much appetite for each other as humans do for them. Says Marine Biologist Douglas Conklin: "They are mean, rotten, aggressive creatures."

Conklin, 36, should know. As associate director of aquaculture at the University of California's Bodega Marine Laboratory, he has been involved in one of the more promising lobster-farming experiments to date. For seven years, marine biologists, chemists, geneticists and nutritionists, working in two small concrete blockhouses on the waterfront of Bodega Bay, a quiet fishing village about two hours' drive northwest of San Francisco, have been unraveling the puzzle of mass-producing lobsters.

To start off, they shortened from two years to just four months the time that it usually takes females to mate, lay eggs and hatch their young. How? By cleverly manipulating water temperatures and light exposures within the blockhouses, so the lobsters were duped into thinking they had passed through two full years of seasonal changes when only one-sixth that time had elapsed. Also, because their eggs were released into a controlled environment, free of predators, the survival rate among infants increased to 95%. In addition, by hiking water temperatures to 22DEG C (72DEG F), the scientists caused the lobsters to reach the 1-lb. size in only 2 1/2 to 3 years. Finally, the problem of cannibalism was solved by keeping individual lobsters in their own little "condominiums," as scientists dubbed the 3-gal. cubicles, from infancy to adulthood.

The center's experts say that all these efforts were well worth it: the Bodega Bay lobsters are as tasty as, and often less rubbery than, their cousins from the sea. But there are still difficulties to overcome.

Turning the subsidized lab operation into a commercial assembly line is a problem that has been occupying other researchers at La Jolla. They are now weighing two ocean-front sites, both near power plants.

Effluent from the stations would provide free hot water for an experimental factory that could produce 6,000 Ibs. of lobster a year at competitive prices.

Conklin, who says his team is "optimistic but not jumping over a cliff," predicts that it will take another five years before commercial lobster farming can begin. But he thinks one outstanding problem can be licked long before then.

Fed a blend of soybean and milk protein ingeniously ground up with a restaurant macaroni machine, the lobsters eagerly snapped up dinner with their claws --"sometimes just like hungry dogs," says Conklin. But the artificial diet, alas, produced almost snow-white lobsters (unlike the motley-colored beasts in nature). For anyone who thinks this might be objectionable, Conklin's advice: add a dash of paprika or some other natural coloring to the feed. That should turn them into redbacks even before they are cooked.

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