The lobster’s journey starts long before the lobster tank in your supermarket. In the case of Nova Scotia’s South Shore lobster, their trek begins miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
The temperature at the dock was in the low 30s, but I wasn’t shivering. I dressed in several layers in anticipation of the colder offshore temperatures.
When we reached our traps, marked by buoys, we needed to pull them up from 12 fathoms. Fishers string together the bright blue and yellow wire traps in groups of six.
As they sit on the side of the boat, one fisher works one side of the trap capably, removing the trapped lobster, measuring them, and dropping them in buckets.
On the other side of the trap, another fisher removes the remains of the old bait and re-baits the trap.
They place the re-baited traps on the back deck of the boat until we reach a new area, and then they go back into the ocean.
The next stop on the lobsters’ journey was Fisher Direct, a lobster pound, where they store lobsters before shipping.
The facility consists of several saltwater tanks with a total capacity of 650,000 pounds of lobster. The first tank is the Purge Tank, where lobsters remain for 48 hours, so they have time to cleanse.