Do You like book The Secret Life Of Lobsters: How Fishermen And Scientists Are Unraveling The Mysteries Of Our Favorite Crustacean (2005)?
I read this in my continuing attempt to find my inner lobster (my Umwelt), which is necessary for someone who "should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Plenty of warm, buttery tidbits here about lobster behavior, serving as a metaphor perhaps for the human drama of lobstermen versus the government. The term 'pissing contest' has taken on new meaning. By coincidence, as I was reading this, I visited one of those new Uber-supermarkets; you know, a place where you can listen to live music, get your car's oil changed and find organic persimmons out of season. They had, of course, a lobster tank with a few dozen of what our author calls 'our favorite crustaceans' crawling over each other. I wanted to shout out loud, "No. Stop this. They don't like that. That's not how they live."This book helped me to see lobsters. I'm happy to eat them though.
—Tony
I love lobster. I thought they were getting rare (as in too many being caught). The government thought so too, so they limited the haul. Then the lobstermen (who had a darn good reason to know more about lobster behavior than any government policy wonk) figured out that was not so. In the end, this is mainly a story about how the industry effectively won the right to regulate its catch itself, with a side does of "it's not really necessary." Those lobsters are having a LOT of sex. But how lobsters have sex, how they choose their mates, and what happens to the little baby lobsterettes after they hatch is the best part of the story ... essentially a detective story.Absolutely fascinating! Eat more lobster! It helps the lobstermen!
—William Blair
The lobsters are really interesting. The people are too - marine scientists and lobster fishermen and their families - just not as much. I read this for the natural history aspect, and the lobster ecology, biology, behavior, and population dynamics do not disappoint. Pretty fascinating stuff, especially the courting and mating rituals of the spiny crustaceans, which weren't what the scientists were expecting when they finally got around to testing out their ideas with live lobsters in seawater tanks. For me, the best thing about the book is that it is a great case study of how science is done, how scientists (driven by one of the best of our species' qualities, curiosity) ask questions about interesting, often puzzling, phenomenon, come up with theories to explain what they've observed, then devise simple but ingenious experiments, as in this book, to test out their ideas, with the results often giving rise to new questions and new theories. It's a great book on the scientific method, as it turns out.
—Nancy