Habitat
Rocky shores and reefs, from 20-100m depth.
Geographical spread
Temperate seas.
Status
IUCN consider them Commercially threatened.
Size
Up to 500mm long.
Average life expectancy
Can live up to 50 years.
Normal diet
A carnivore and a scavenger. Uses powerful claws to crack open molluscs and
crustaceans.
Normal lifestyle
Live in holes and crevices on rocky bottoms in which they spend the day,
emerging at night. Lobsters walk along the seabed. They take several years to reach maturity
and females tend to breed at two year intervals. Females produce up to 100,000 eggs, once
fertilised they carry around beneath their abdomens for many months before releasing them as
tiny larvae.
Reasons for decline
Commercially important in temperate seas as a source of food. The
European lobster has been fished extensively and there is a huge business attached to lobsters
which command a big price. Lobsters are usually caught in trips, enticed by stinking bait to
enter a tunnel of decreasing diameter protruding into a wider chamber. Lobster meat is
processed as a meat paste, canned or sold frozen or fresh.
File last modified Thursday, October 3, 1996