Responding to the hoopla about Bubba the lobster (RIP), BB reader Kate says:
Hey, no offense, but a 22 pound lobster isn't all that big. What's more remarkable is that it survived so long in captivity. Check out (Trevor Corson's) Atlantic article on Dr. Bob Steneck, the lobster king, who routinely comes across specimens like this four foot long, 40 pound female when he's out in his sub. Link
The Atlantic archives are for paid subscribers only, so here's an excerpt from The Secret Life of Lobsters, the book that grew out of Corson's article:
Armed with searchlights, video cameras angled both forward and down, four whirring propellers, and a pair of lasers, the Phantom was likely to dominate an encounter with any lobster, no matter how large and antagonistic.
Or so Bob hoped. A few years back he'd been aboard a nuclear submarine owned by the U.S. Navy, cruising the sea floor off the continental shelf, when the sonar operator had reported a target at two hundred meters. Bob had slipped into the cramped observation module belowdecks. There, through a six-inch-thick glass portal, he'd been faced with the largest lobster he'd ever seen. She was a four-foot-long female, probably weighing thirty or forty pounds. She had turned toward the submarine and defiantly raised her claws.
UPDATE: Trevor Corson tells me he's "been following Bubba's plight over the past week" at his Lobster Blog! Link
