Someone pinched my arm, and it was not my dive buddy!

Someone pinched my arm during one of the dives this weekend in Zeeland, so I looked over my shoulder to find this large, clawed creature: a European lobster Homarus gammarus.

Photographically it was quite a challenging weekend. As you can see in the photo below of a Compass jellyfish Chrysaora hysoscella, the visibility was exceptionally bad. Also, I was limited to using a very wide fisheye, and this time of the year there are very few species that will fill the frame through that lens.

A compass jellyfish in the Eastern Scheldt, the Netherlands. The poor visibility can make photography a real challenge here.

Back to the European lobster. Because they grow slowly and become quite old — they can reach the age of 50 — European lobster are relatively sensitive to fishing. This short documentary made by Willy Mullens in 1923 (via Geschiedenis Zeeland) shows that the small-scale lobster fisheries of those days already understood a key requisite for sustainable fisheries: not taking small individuals that haven’t yet had the chance to reproduce.

However, the years after the Second World War bring an explosive growth of the Dutch fisheries, and by the 1960s, after receiving the deathblow from an unusually cold winter, the lobster population has crashed.

Today, lobster fishing in the Netherlands is regulated through permits, a limited fishing season, and the prohibition of landing lobster smaller than 24cm as well as egg-bearing females. Luckily, the European lobster is again doing reasonably well in the Oosterschelde (Eastern Scheldt) and surrounding waters, as can be seen in the photo below showing a trap full of large specimens at ‘de Val’.

European lobster in a trap in the Eastern Scheldt, the Netherlands.

Clearly, populations can restore if given the chance, and regulation can be effective if done properly. Let’s make this happen for other species in trouble as well. We will all benefit.