Wall Street Journal quotes Steneck in article on proposed American lobster ban

Robert Steneck, a marine biologist at the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal article, “Marauding American lobsters find themselves in hot water.” Scientists say the male American lobster’s unusually large crusher claw is at the center of a push by Sweden to ban imports of the species to all European Union countries, according to the article. Sweden says the American species could spawn a new generation of hybrids and eventually crowd out European lobsters, the article states. Steneck agrees that the American crusher claw does “get inflated in the males as they get bigger, and that does not happen in the European,” but he doubts claw size is that important. If big claws were so pivotal to mating, then evolution would have bestowed them on the European variety of lobster, too, he said.