A chance meeting at an event in London last year led to our morning visit today. We headed just a few minutes walk from where we were staying to The National Lobster Hatchery, Padstow, to meet Business Development Officer Clare Stanley who arranged for us to have a behind the scenes tour. Clare and I had been attending a shellfish workshop.
The hatchery was set up in 2000 when fisherman Eddy Derriman recognised the vulnerability of the lobster fishing industry. In Norway stocks crashed in the 1950s-1960s. Where once annual catches were more than 1,000 tonnes, today it is around 30 tonnes. Stocks simply have not re-established. In the 1980s-1990s stocks in Cornwall were declining and some in the industry realised something needed to be done for long-term survival.
Eddy Derriman started researching and decided to set up a hatchery. Its aim was to produce and release baby lobsters in an effort to enhance and protect Cornwall’s stocks, as well as to carry out vital research and education. Four years of hard work led to charitable status. In 2016 he received an MBE for marine conservation.
To protect our fish stocks the industry has a Minimum Landing Size (MLS) for each species. A lobster’s carapace (best described as the shell at its neck area) must be more than 90mm. This enables younger lobsters to grow and reproduce before being caught. Those less than this size must be returned to the sea. Those above this size can be landed, and with eggs if they are carrying them. But this is where the hatchery steps in. It is in the interest of the industry to pass these females to the hatchery, which will hold them in tanks until the eggs are hatched, and then return the adult lobster to those who have landed them. These tanks are aptly named the ‘maternity ward’. Each female can lay up to 35,000 eggs. It is estimated that just 1 in 20,000 newborn lobsters survive in the wild – they are eaten by predators, including their own kind. In the hatchery around 1 in 20 survive.
Here we watched as newborn lobsters swam towards a light and into a new tank. The babies are ‘positively phototactic’, which means they naturally head to the light, just like moths do. They start feeding straightaway, either consuming very fine high protein feed provided in the tanks, or each other. Two-day old lobsters (about half a centimetre long) were intent on eating each other in front of our eyes. That’s nature.
In the first month the lobsters go through great bodily changes, before they look like the lobster shapes we are familiar with. At this stage they are moved to individual containers, by hand.
This involves thousands of baby lobsters. Here they are grown on until reaching around 25mm long (about 3 months old) when they will be able to defend themselves more effectively. These juveniles are then released onto the seabed, their natural habitat at this stage, assisted by divers or via tubes from boats.
As a charity relying solely on donations the hatchery has developed many creative ways to raise much needed finance. Some local restaurants run a ‘Buy one, set one free’ scheme where customers who purchase lobster from the menu are asked to donate £1 which helps pay for the release of a lobster from the hatchery. One restaurant alone has raised £37,000 in three years. Other supporters include beer and wine companies making donations from sales. Even wedding favours can now include an ethical way to remember the day with an ‘Adopt a lobster’ scheme for just £4 each.
Today much research continues. PhD students are actively engaged in genetics research, environmental conditions, and the possibility of tracking in the wild to help further knowledge of this species.
A most interesting visit and our thanks to Clare and the team.
Nice view from the office, Camel estuary
Copyright: words and photos, Sue Barnard 2019