They do have the best tasting meat. Still kinda scary.

ginandbacon: They do have the best tasting meat. Still kinda scary.

softshells are easier for noobs to eat (because they can basically use their hands to tear the shell) -- they cook quicker, the meat is denser -- but the shells are not as full.

but hardshells are the tastier. the meat is sweeter (tastier is what some people say). there is more meat (that is the shell is fuller)

Thisbymaster: Maybe because we had a full warm summer week in February that kick started spring up here? Anyone else remember the >9000 pollen count? I know my nose still does.

This. Everything is early this year in the northeast

AverageAmericanGuy: Red Lobster has fresh lobster year round.

3/10 - Any higher rating, and I would be just buttering you up.

Rat: Wow...wrong thread? Somebody tell me this was the wrong thread before I forget what forum I'm in.

I think this is the thread where people talk about how they love to eat giant flavorless insects once they slather them with butter.

I had some lobster when I visited my family a couple of weeks ago. It was definitely hard shell. It came from the North Shore of New Brunswick, where the water is colder than Maine. No doubt the warm water slash warm winter theory is correct. Just another tiny brick in the wall of climate change.

I read that the cygnets (baby swans) hatched early this year--by early they mean, earlier than any time since the 1300s. Monks have cultivated the wild swans for centuries (in much of the UK, swans are a royal perogative and thus people can't hunt or farm them without royal permission). Last winter was definitely an extraordinary one. That makes 326 months of unusual weather in a row. I wonder if the answer could be -- global warming? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

I like lobster but it's a royal pest to eat. Mothergoose says that you could starve to death eating it.

In the Maritime Provinces, lobster-fishing is seasonal because of the colder water, but they tend to take smaller lobster, while in Maine, they fish year-round but manage the stocks more closely, with higher limits on the smallest lobster you can keep. This leads to a bit of cross-border irritation, but lobster fishermen are extremely jealous of their territority and their traps (they'll cut you up if you touch their traps) any way, so lobstermen aren't exactly gregarious. Fish are, to some extent, a situational good--although the roaming species are just the opposite--impossible to corral and control, even at the national or regional level.

All I care about is that the management of the stocks is scientific enough to prevent crashes.

The problem is that each generation of scientists, like each generation of government bureaucrats, corporations and fishermen, base their expectations on the immediate past. This can mask long term declines so that "normal" is always a few years or decades ago. This is a tragic situation for stocks and for the fishing industry. "Management" becomes an illusion of control when in reality the fish stocks are in rapid decline.

We've already lost 95% of the big fish--the human tendancy to take the biggest, best breeders is actually causing seafood to evolve rapidly towards smaller sized fish and shellfish, that breed earlier and produce less spawn.

I hope we can wise up before we go belly-up. There's plenty of blame to go around to everybody involved. No need to point fingers at one interest group or nation here.

My guess is that there will be a fish war between Canada and the USA when the warming waters push the lobster and other valuable fish stocks a bit further North. Already, the blue crab is being fished much further North than it was (it's a famous product of Chesapeake Bay, which is an ecological tragedy in some respects, although a success story in others). The same thing is happending in European waters, where the blue crab is now being fished commercially as far North as Scotland.

The decline of fish stocks has not only forced fishermen to turn to crustaceans, it has increased the stocks of crustaceans because their young are not being eaten by as many fish, but there's a risk that we'll crash the crab and lobster fisheries, and then move on to whatever is left, working our way down from the most desirable species to the barely edible. We are already using massive amounts of small fish ("sardines" and worse) to feed our farmed salmon, tulapia, etc.

Anybody care for a slice of jelly fish?

In addition to Environment Canada, I worked at Fisheries and Oceans many years ago.

The most important thing I learned there is: LISTEN TO YOUR GD SCIENTISTS, FOOLS!

The scientists were 20 years ahead of the bureaucrats and politicians then, and are probably 40-80 years ahead now, which means that their predictions for 2100 are pretty damn sound.

I'm afraid that many of the scientists are "optimists". They go native in bureaucracy and government and start pleasing their superiors and flattering corporate interests rather than telling it like it is.

This is human nature. If nothing else, it is prone to denial and wishful thinking. Some of them may think they are honestly serving public interest, but they are as delusional as any other incompetents. They have the greatest confidence in themselves when they are actually the people who the least competence and knowledge.

But we are Farkers. We have seen ALL the studies that show sociopaths and ignoramuses rise to the top like turds in a cess pool.

Just big bottom dwelling aquatic bugs.

Where's the BEEF?

whyRpeoplesostupid: Thisbymaster: Maybe because we had a full warm summer week in February that kick started spring up here? Anyone else remember the >9000 pollen count? I know my nose still does.

This. Everything is early this year in the northeast

No, it must be global warming/cooling/middling/the hole in the ozone layer.

In before that asshole with the green text.