140 year old lobster

[Ronster]

A 12 point buck isn't 140 years old. 

What does it's age have to do with anything?    Does it have any secrets of the deep it can reveal to us?     

[jdroat]

What does it's age have to do with anything?    Does it have any secrets of the deep it can reveal to us?     

Good point. It may be able to lead us to Jimmy Hoffas body.

[unclebuttsy]

Lobsters have an exo-skeleton and do not get tough with age. Just trickier to cook big ones properly.

[chesapeak]

In the early 80s I spent a couple of years working on a comm. scallop boat. We worked about 150 miles off shore at Georges Banks pulling two dredges on the ocean floor for an hour at a time. We would haul and dump the dredges with tons of by product on the deck of the boat. We routinly hauled in lobsters over 3 feet and over 20 pounds. They would be dead from all the trauma and many times mangled and in pieces. We would just cut the tails off and drop them in big pots of water we always had boiling and chew on them as snacks between haul backs. We had no way to freeze them and on shore everyone only wants live lobsters. We once hauled in just the end claw of a lobster that was bigger than a basketball wide and twice as long. That end piece (the section with the pincher's to the first knuckle) had to weigh 20lbs by itself. There are some big ones out there.  After that job, lobster was the only seafood I couldnt eat. I was so sick of it I dont think I ate lobster again for at least 15 years.

[unclebuttsy]

Now that's quite a fish story!

Chesapeke, would you agree that old lobsters don't get tough?

I must say, I am glad that when I was young and dumb, I was tempted to go scallop fishing and didn't - I lived in New Bedford. It was easy money.

I'm glad I never went, and you Sir, are a better man than me. Good on you that you made it back. Those Alaskans can talk all they want about the 'deadliest catch' but you know better.

[chesapeak]

I was young, dumb and reckless back then. For me it was a love for anything having to do with the water and fishing mixed with promises of big money. That was enough to overcome the fact that no one should be that far off shore in strong currents and big storms in a rusty old 52" boat for 2-3 weeks at a time. The only easy part about it was the trip in and out. Once you got out there you worked around the clock for days at a time. I think I have watched every Deadliest Catch episode. I love it and it is similar but back then we didn't have any safety training or protective suits etc. Our boat was a wreck with problem after problem. It was sort of a gold rush mentality and if you owned something that had dredges and would float you went for it. Every trip was a big time gamble. It made for great memories and I could tell you a million stories. 

It didn't matter what size the tails were they all had the same consistency. We used to get tails the size of a loaf of bread. We would chop them in half or thirds and drop them in the boiling water. Then just bite chunks out of them. Lobsterman back then rarely even went off shore much because there were plenty of good lobsters along the coasts and in the bays etc. We were killing tons of lobster on every trip as by product and just shoveling them off the back of the boat. Now even the lobsterman need to go out a good ways for a decent catch.