National Lobster Day

National Lobster Day Facts

• Lobsters Keep Growing and Reproducing Well Into Old Age

  American lobsters do not stop growing at adulthood; instead, they molt and increase in size throughout life, and older females can actually produce more eggs than younger ones.

  Studies show that large females may carry tens of thousands of eggs, and lobsters maintain telomerase activity in many tissues, which helps delay some cellular aging, allowing them to stay fertile for decades even though they are not truly immortal.

• Lobster Mothers Carry Their Eggs for Almost a Year

  After mating, a female American lobster can store sperm for months and then fertilize her eggs, which she carries attached under her tail on specialized appendages for about 10 to 11 months.

  During this time, she actively aerates and cleans the egg mass until the larvae hatch and drift into the plankton, where only a tiny fraction survives their first weeks due to intense predation.

• From Prison Fare to Luxury Entrée

  In colonial New England, lobsters were so abundant and cheap that they were commonly fed to servants, prisoners, and even livestock, and sometimes used as fertilizer or bait rather than prized food.

  By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, improvements in canning, rail transport, and tourism allowed lobster to reach inland cities and upscale hotels, transforming it into a fashionable restaurant delicacy instead of a mark of poverty.

• Maine’s Coastal Towns Depend Heavily on Lobster

  In Maine, lobster is not just a menu item but the backbone of many coastal communities, supporting thousands of jobs on boats, wharves, and in shoreside businesses.

  Conservation groups and regional researchers describe the lobster fishery as “crucial” to the state’s working waterfronts, tying together income for harvesters, boatyards, bait dealers, processors, and tourism built around the image of the Maine lobster.

• Canada’s Most Valuable Seafood Export

  American (Atlantic) lobster is Canada’s single most valuable seafood export by dollar value, outpacing other major fisheries.

  Federal and independent analyses report Canadian lobster exports in the billions of Canadian dollars annually, with recent estimates around 2.6 to 3.2 billion CAD, much of it coming from highly productive lobster fishing areas off Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

• Warming Seas Are Pushing Lobsters to Cooler Waters

  The Gulf of Maine, a core habitat for American lobster, has been warming faster than about 99 percent of the global ocean, and fishers report noticeable changes in where and when they find lobsters.

  Scientific work and interviews with harvesters point to inshore populations becoming stressed by higher temperatures, with lobsters shifting toward deeper, cooler waters and declines already documented further south in Southern New England.

• Lobster Traps Are Part of a Bigger Conservation Debate

  Entanglement in fishing gear, including vertical lines from lobster and crab traps, is recognized by U.S. and Canadian authorities as a major threat to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

  In response, both countries have introduced measures such as seasonal closures, gear marking, line-reduction requirements, and experimental “ropeless” systems to reduce whale entanglements while still allowing lobster fisheries to operate.