BATH

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, in coordination with the Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance, will offer a free workshop on keeping lobsters healthy led by Canadian lobster health expert Jean Lavallée on April 18 from 3-6 p.m. at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.

“Dead lobsters aren’t worth anything. Weak lobsters aren’t worth enough,” said Patrice McCarron, MLA executive director. “Jean Lavallée is here to speak to lobstermen, sternmen, dockworkers, lobster buyers and anyone involved in the lobster fishery about simple, commonsense things we can do to keep lobsters healthy from the moment they come on to the boat.”

Simply put, lobsters have weird biological systems. A lobster’s stomach lies behind its head. Its heart is on its back. It has one nerve cord that travels along the bottom of the body. A lobster’s blood veins are not in a circuit like a human’s. Its heart pumps blood into ever smaller veins and capillaries which come to an end and then disperse blood through all the tissues. So it’s easy to injure a lobster. When a lobster is hurt, it will bleed easily.

Everyone knows that lobsters thrive in cold water on the ocean floor. So, it’s not surprising that they get stressed out when they are taken out of the water. They particularly do not like to get warm. “They are cold blooded so if the environment gets warmer the lobster heart beats harder to move blood to the gills and dissipate heat,” Lavallée said.

Once a lobster gets stressed out, it begins to grow weak. Keeping lobsters as vigorous and healthy as possible from the moment they are hauled up in a trap adds dollars to the bottom line of both lobstermen and lobster buyers.

“Lavallée gave a short version of this workshop at the MLA Annual meeting in early March. The feedback from the industry was loud and clear – they wanted this guy back,” said McCarron.

Anyone involved in Maine’s lobster industry is

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