Maybe I was pre-disposed to liking this book — there are lobstermen in my grandfather’s generation off the coast of Nova Scotia — but I really found this book to be so fascinating that I couldn’t put it down for days and finished it up quite quickly.
Of course, I love to eat lobster. One of my favorite birthday gifts is when my husband orders from Maine Lobster Direct and has them send me a DownEast Feast. My great-grandmother used to send mittens and socks to us kids, and canned lobster meat for our parents for Christmas.
I never knew anything about lobster in any context outside of dinner, but this book leaves nothing much to the imagination. And it makes it interesting! Who knew?
It discusses the mating dance between the males and females, and the conservation efforts the lobstermen were doing independent of the government scientists that were telling them it was all going to be gone if they didn’t stop. Still more scientists were working on figuring out where the lobsters go throughout their lives. Meanwhile, the catch keeps going up each year even though the government scientists are telling the lobstermen that they were overfishing. The lobstermen had to prove, to themselves at least, that they were preserving the next generations of lobster. If they didn’t do that, they would be out of a job, and what of their business could they hand down to the next generation?
The story flows from the shore to the boats to the pots to the labs and keeps you turning page after page. If you are looking for a quick summer read that might teach you something new, maybe this is the book for you. I thoroughly enjoyed it.