The Development of the Live Lobster Trade

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The Development of the Live Lobster Trade

Simply Cooking - Food & Drink

Written by Sherry Shantel

Friday, 25 September 2009 11:49

Ahhhhh! Just think about forking a succulent bite of fresh lobster meat into your mouth and savoring it all the way down! How could anything taste more sublime? But before you rush out to your nearest Red Lobster and choose your live lobster for a $25.00 lobster dinner, let's spend a little bit of time getting to know something about the critter that you're drooling over.

by SherryShantel

Ahhhhh! Just think about forking a succulent bite of fresh lobster meat into your mouth and savoring it all the way down! How could anything taste more sublime? But before you rush out to your nearest Red Lobster and choose your live lobster for a $25.00 lobster dinner, let's spend a little bit of time getting to know something about the critter that you're drooling over.

Once upon a time, America was peopled by only Native Americans, and lobsters were plentiful. They were so plentiful, in fact, that the Native Americans used them as fertilizer for farm fields and fish bait. They never ate them! Yuck!

The early European settlers which graced our shores didn't eat lobster meat, either. They'd pick them up by hand to use as fertilizer or to feed to the lowest creatures of their society, slaves, indentured servants, children, and the poor. After years of this practice, indentured servants begin to protest the constant lobster diet. In fact, they went so far as having it written into their contracts that they would never have to eat lobster more than three times a week.

Since lobsters could be harvested so easily by hand from the tide pools, there was no need for people to devise more technological methods of trapping them. It wasn't until the 1850s that lobster traps first appeared. The lobsters these early harvesters caught weren't marketed live, either. They were sent to canneries. The early canning methods pretty well eliminated the flavor of the meat leaving the resulting product pretty bland and tasteless. Naturally it failed to catch on with consumers.

With the advent of modern transportation, live lobsters became the delicacies they continue to be today. As it became possible to ship live lobsters to America's largest cities, they caught on with the well-to-do, and the rest is just history.

If you're like I am, you may feel a little squeamish about seeing your dinner lying serene and green in a tank one minute and bright-red and cooked on your plate the next. This feeling, too, dates back to the beginning of lobster-eating. Lobster experts swear, however, that it's the only way to have fresh lobster.

During my lifetime I've known family members tracing clear back to my great grandmother who was born in 1873. Even when seafood came into vogue, she never ate it. As a Victorian lady, she would never have even wanted to think about throwing something live into a pot of boiling water. After all, women in the Victorian era were sheltered from the harsh realities of life.

At least we've finally learned to appreciate the quality of a live lobster dinner. The prices have even come down enough that middle-class citizens can afford to eat them, too. We can buy them in supermarkets or from online merchants and cook them in our own homes. We've come a long way, baby!

About the Author:

Thanks for dropping by and checking out more about seafood. Knowledge and reliable information on this subject is often scarce, so hopefully you got exactly what you were looking for in this article. Of course if you would like to expand your knowledge about shipping lobster then drop by our website.