Introduction
Every baseball fan recognizes the magical numbers 56, 61 and 715. Basketball fans are enamored with 23 and 100. Pele’s number 10 jerseys still fetch thousands at auctions. Most Americans alive today react to 9/11 and SciFi connoisseurs have been raised on 1984 and 2001. But what about lobster scientists?
Soon 18, 117 and 217 will be etched in our brains. Next time you sit down to eat a lobster you won’t be able to avoid thinking about Ehud Spanier eating 18 different species of lobsters in his career. When you pull up your next trap and joke that it must be so heavy because it is full of lobsters, think of Sara Ellis sorting through 117 of them from one ventless trap. Think that jumbo American lobster in the local aquarium is big? Try pulling up a 217 mm CL male while SCUBA diving (I think it was actually larger than Peter Lawton). How can you possibly forget these milestones?
Are you worried you will? Me too. So, I have created a repository for these interesting facts and figures: The Lobster Book of World Records (actually, this website).
If you have a record that you think I should add, feel free to contact me. All records you submit should have some type of validation (testimony from dive buddy, reference, Xerox of page from data book, etc.). We welcome pictures of records as well as record holders, to enhance the website.
Below is just a small sampling of the records we have and the types of records we seek. As an indication of how easy it is for you to get into the record book, even Stan Cobb (yes THAT Stan Cobb) managed to sneak into the Book with the following record: most lobster legs eaten by rats, 150.
Eating
• Most lobsters eaten at one sitting: 10. Ehud Spanier. 1995
• Honorable Mention:7, Grabowski
• Most lobster species eaten: 18, Ehud Spanier
Lobsters as animals
• Smallest egger captured: 52 mm CL, Carl Wilson
• Longest distance traveled by a lobster: 800 kms, A. Campbell.
• Longest time between tag and recapture: 9 years, Jay Krouse
Publications
• Most species in one paper: 22 Ehud Spanier
• Worst conditions experienced while writing a paper: Peter Lawton, laundry room of ship while writing chapter for Biology of Lobsters.
• Longest time between first data point and last data point collected, but not during a time-series project: 11 years*, Jan Factor (*Data must be published).
Catch/Collecting/Experiments
• Most lobsters captured in a single trap: 117, Sara Ellis
• Most phylogenetically distinct species captured in one attempt: 1 human and one spiny. Mark Butler. 1989.
• Most PLs captured in 15 minute tow: 198, Stan Cobb
• Most postlarval spiny lobsters caught in 60 minutes: 67 (P. argus pueruli) (Jason Goldstein and Peter Bouwma).
• Great number/biomass in single transect: 170 large females, Peter Lawton.
• Most animals handled while sea sampling in 1 day: 2000, David Robicheau.
• Longest single research dive: 3 hours, Tom Langley
• Most lobsters in a trawl: 3,982 or 194/min, Carl Wilson, 1998.
• Most recaptures of one animal: 7, Carl Wilson
• Most collecting dives in a year: 210, Cindy Lewis
• Most lobsters captured in a single attempt: 7, Don Behringer
• Largest lobster captured diving: 217 male, 207 berried female, Peter Lawton.
• Largest spiny lobster captured diving:180 mm, Cindy Lewis.
• Most southern H. americanus captured/documented (Miami Beach, 252 meters, Stephen V. Cofer-Shabica and Richard Nielson, Bull Mar. Sci. 43: 315-317, 1988).
• Deepest documented settlement of H. americanus (85 m, Rick Wahle, 2007).
• Furthest north settlement of H. americanus (Newfoundland, Rick Wahle)
• Longest time spent videotaping a dead lobster (48 hour time lapse, Steve Jury, 1999).
Catch/collecting commercial division
• Most lobsters held in one facility at one time (250,000; Shafmaster, NH).
• Furthest shipment of lobsters for scientific purposes: USA to Japan (via Florida Keys –> Miami, Florida –> Memphis, Tennessee –> Anchorage, Alaska –> Osaka, Japan, Mie, Japan) 27 hours (Jason Goldstein, Mark Butler, and Hirokazu Matsuda).
Career Achievements
• Longest to complete Masters Degree: 10 years (Somers).
Meetings
• Bawdiest song, sung at a conference: Peter Lawton-2007.