UMaine, Ready Seafood working to harden lobster shells, Press Herald reports
The Portland Press Herald reported researchers at the University of Maine and Ready Seafood Co. of Portland are working to examine what influences shell growth in Maine lobsters to see if they can speed up the shell-hardening process in recently molted crustaceans. In Maine, the summer catch is mostly soft-shell lobsters, or shedders, which sell for a lower price per pound than a hard-shell lobster. Hardening the shell could turn a shedder into a more valuable lobster, said Curt Brown, a Ready Seafood scientist. Brown worked with Abby Shaughnessy, a senior in UMaine’s School of Marine Sciences, to see if they could grow 1-pound soft-shell Ready lobsters from an initial Grade B shell hardness into a firmer Grade A in a series of one-week trials conducted over the summer at UMaine’s Darling Marine Center, the article states. In a typical week, about 35 percent of the test lobsters successfully made the “jump” from a B to an A. But so far, the tests do not reveal any shortcuts — neither diet nor water temperature appears to hasten growth or improve survival, Shaughnessy said. “We found that time is the only factor,” she said. “We couldn’t speed it up, but we proved upgrading could be done for more than a third of those we tested.” Brown and Shaughnessy’s honors adviser, UMaine professor Rick Wahle, hope to continue the work at Ready’s holding tank facility. “That’s the really exciting thing about Abby’s work,” Wahle said. “It’s a college senior’s thesis project, and its preliminary results, but if we could figure out a way to make the lobsters we have more valuable, that’s really big for Maine.”