LOBSTER-CATCHING AT EBB-TIDE.
SINCE the Mayor of Plymouth went out to catch lobsters on the rocks, and was himself caught, as Charles Kingsley relates in the "Water Babies," lobster-catching with the naked hand has been a discredited art. Even on the coast of the Isle of Wight, where the crab and lobster do duty as signs for half the inns of the fishing hamlets, and might well be adopted as the supporters of the coat-of-arms of the island, this heroic form of the sport barely survives. As now practised at the eastern corner of "the Wight," it is pursued by a single fisherman, who has revived what was a lost art. Its rediscovery was due to accident. Searching for king-crabs for bait among the rock-pools and reefs of Bem- bridge Ledge, he one day pulled out, not a crab, but a fine lobster. Being an adept in most branches of long-shore sport and natural history, it was not long before he learnt the secrete of lobster life and habits in their summer sojourn near the shore. Thenceforth he abandoned all the apparatus of the trade, and in place of boats and wicker cages used only his eyes, and those wonderfully developed members, the fisherman's hand and foot. An ebb-tide spent among the reefs in such company shows more than can be learnt of the life of sea-creatures in a dozen aquariums ; and though an amateur will be long before he learns to draw an angry lobster from its hole with his naked hand, he may soon become an expert at discovering their haunts. At our last visit to the reef, the lobsters bad been frightened, as our guide asserted, by the violent thunderstorm of the previous evening (the storm of August 22nd), and many had retired into deeper water. But now the shore lay quiet in the hush before sun- rise. There was neither mist nor vapour on sea or cliffs, which stood out sharp and clear in the salt air. The new moon had drawn the tide away to the furthest limits of the ebb, and uncovered hundreds of acres of reef between sea and shore. The inverted order of life below water leaves the ooze and mudbanks bare of life, and covers the barren stones with foliage. Each tract of root has its appropriate growth. Every foot of the flat ledge is overlaid with pop-weed, so thickly in places that when spread flat at the ebb of the tide it looks like some sown crop, and makes an inelastic gelatinous cushion beneath the feet. These bronze flats stretch in level lines to where the storms have piled a Cyclops' wall against the outer edges of the reef. This is set with long fingers of a coarser weed, which hangs awash, and covers the entrance to the conger caves, whence the big eels often crawl to the minor pools within the reef. The accident of thrusting the fingers into a conger's mouth has to be con- sidered among the possible contingencies of the sport of lobster-catching with the hand, and a stout stick is carried as a weapon in the event of a conger-hunt over the shallow lakes and sea-grass. But the rock-caves and hard reef are not the favourite home of the lobsters. Tough and ancient lobsters, with barnacles and sea-web on their claws, may prefer a fixed home beyond low-water mark. But the younger lobsters love to roam. " They go courting o' nights," as our guide observed, and wander from pool to pool. If they meet a lady lobster on the rocks they walk, claw in claw, to the rich sea-meadows that lie within the reef, covered with heavy crops of green sea-grass. There the water lies in shallow sheets, even at the lowest ebb, and under the sea-turf the lobsters burrow like rabbits, and, like rabbits, leave outside their holes piles of stones and sand. Seen from the shore these sea-meadows appear as lakes, on which the long grass floats like green ribbon, combed in one direction by the set of the tide, and covering the surface with a level sheet of verdure. Into these lakes the lobster-catcher steps, barefooted and bare-armed, with his basket and his conger-club. As the eye grows used to the change from land to water, and learns to see the bottom as a gull or a brent-
goose or a fisherman sees it, the shallow lake is resolved into a series of submerged pools, each of which is a natural aquarium. The tide slips over a deposit of sand and mud, which rests upon a bed of smooth rock. In this deposit the currents have excavated hollows down to the level of the underlying reef. On the hard bottom the sea-grass cannot grow, though its long ribbons are drawn by the currents and eddies across the surface, and often hide the pools from sight like a floating curtain. Beneath it, on the floor of the pools, are beds of cuplike moss, long brown fronds of crimp-weed, and feathery masses of sea-lichen. There the hermit-crabs creep in their whelk-shells; spider-crabs, secure in their coat of real seaweed growing on their backs, sit still, and pretend to be stones ; and lovely sea-anemones, green, like the grass, will suck your fingers with a hundred months, and give in -kind, if not in quantity, the sensation caused by the grasp of the tentacles of an octopus.
" You can have them pink," as a young lady who shared the -sport remarked; but in the sea-meadows the zoophytes are of the colour of their surroundings. Dr. Caine, in his work on -" English Dogges," mentions a kind which was used for catch- ing lobsters. Judging from our experience of human instinct shown in the course of our morning among the rocks, we are inclined to think that a dog might be trained to aid in the sport, and that the story is not the myth it seems. Our guide quartered the ground like a water-spaniel, sweeping aside the floating weed, thrusting his feet beneath the hanging banks, and passing rapidly from pool to pool. "Here is a lobster," be remarked, pointing to the bank of a hollow, where an irregular mound of sand lay upon the bottom. Opposite this was the mouth of the burrow, where the lobster sits and feeds ; at a short distance was the bolt-hole which it makes, like the rabbit, for escape in time of danger. Into this the fisherman thrust his foot, and stripping off a foot or so of turf from above the main hole, put in his hand and drew out a fine blue lobster, which he grasped just behind the last of the smaller -claws. It had recently shed its coat, and the new carapace, though perfectly formed, was of the texture and elasticity of thick note-paper. As we splashed on, searching the shallows, we learnt something of the habits of the lobsters, and of the manipulation by which they are dragged from their holes. 'Sometimes the young, no larger than prawns, are found sitting in the same holes with their elders. More commonly a male and female lobster have made a joint burrow, and unite in -defending it. At such times they will not "bolt," but fight at the entrance. Then it is that the timid and tentative -finger of the amateur lobster-catcher suffers. The expert thrusts in his whole hand, with the fingers flattened and held tightly together, keeping it pressed against the top of the burrow until he feels the lobster's back, and grasps it beyond -reach of the claws. When the creature has made its bolt- hole in the shallow outside the pool in which it feeds, its efforts to escape are an amusing failure. Disturbed by the groping of the enemy below, it shoots out, tail foremost, from the upper hole, like a cork from a bottle, and falls helpless in the inch or so of water which lies among the grass. When bolted into one of the deeper pools, it is far less active than might be expected. It makes a few vigorous strokes back- wards, swimming in jerks, like an enormous prawn made in dark-blue lacquer, and then seems to lose its way, and can generally be picked up by the hand. If near a hole, it springs backwards through the water, and by some unknown means exactly hits the entrance. Perhaps the most amusing -capture made during the morning was that of a small lobster, one of a pair which had swum out from beneath an ancient piece of wreck, and sprung tailwise into a shallow hole. The writer, not without misgivings, endeavoured to tickle the lobster, with that gentle and persuasive move- ment of the tips of the fingers which beguiles the hiding trout. The lobster promptly gave each finger a nip, touching them off with the neatness and rapidity of a young lady Playing scales. Finally, our guide dragged out the lobster -with fingers unpunished, though he bore the mark of a bite inflicted by one on the previous day which had cut like a knife. By the time the glorious August sun had tipped the cloud-banks in the east, and turned the bronze seaweed into sheets of shining gold, our catch of lobsters numbered thirteen; the thunder, or some other cause, had made them scarcer than usual on the reef, for our guide had, earlier in the season, caught fifty in the space of one ebb-tide, by the use of hands and feet alone, in the pools on the ledge. In the "Fur and Feather" series of monographs on game-birds, directions for cooking the various species are thoughtfully added. In this connection it is worth remembering that these freshly caught lobsters are best eaten after being split and grilled in their shells. It is a mistake to suppose that lobsters should be thrown alive into boiling water. They can be killed by a prick from a penknife, and their capture is no more cruel than that of fish.
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