Marine Life - Common Lobster (Homarus gammarus)
Ever been on a dive and seen something you didn’t recognise? The Marine Life pages might help you to recognise the wonderful organisms you have explored in the underwater realm. Read on to find information on such aspects as the feeding, breeding and physiology of some of your favourite marine flora and fauna.
Lobsters have elongate, narrow bodies with very thick exoskeletons and a prominent tail fan. They have dark blue armour with pale yellow markings and long, bright red antennae. The powerful claws differ in shape; one, usually the right-hand claw, is heavier and used for crushing while the other is much sharper and used for cutting. The common lobster lives in holes in rocks or in tunnels excavated from the soft material beneath boulders.
Divers also often encounter lobsters hiding within wrecks. They normally only emerge from their lairs at night but occasionally can be seen roaming the sea bed on their well-developed walking legs. While they generally move by walking they can also swim rapidly backwards in short bursts by fast flexing of their powerful abdomen and using their strong tail as a paddle. Lobsters feed on a variety of bottom-living organisms and also scavenge on dead animals. Breeding occurs once a year from the age of five and mating is believed to occur in the late summer. The eggs are brooded by the female attached in clumps to her pleopods (the appendages of crustacean abdominal segments) and hatch as planktonic larvae after approximately nine months of incubation. After a few moults, the larvae transform into miniature lobsters and settle on the sea bed where they are thought to burrow into soft sediments for the first few years of their lives.
Large lobsters moult only very occasionally, if at all, and become covered in barnacles and other encrusting organisms. This handsome, solitary animal is highly prized as seafood and currently subjected to heavy fishing pressure throughout its geographical range. Consequently, though lobsters have a potential lifespan of 15-20 years and can reach 5 kg in weight and up to a metre in length, they now rarely achieve such impressive dimensions.
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