| We are the only boat that sets to work before the | | | | body. |
| sun has come over the mountains. Only the pale grey | | | | Anyone who has caught a fish knows what this |
| beginnings of a day are at our backs as we slip past | | | | withdrawal looks and feels like, and how quickly it |
| the white-washed walls of the harbour and the | | | | realises itself. Once on land, or on deck, the mercurial |
| lighthouse with its sweeping light. Though the bay is | | | | mottle green of the cod, or even the subtle glisten of |
| pincered between two fingers of land the water is | | | | the dun brown, much- maligned Pollack, fades in |
| rough, slapping against the sides of the boat, sending | | | | moments to the, in comparison, earthly familiarity of a |
| spray into our faces. Our boat is uncovered, a small, | | | | dead fish. Only just before the fish leaves its medium |
| open punt, because we are after the lobster pots that | | | | is the vivid life seen to be believed. With a line cast |
| fringe the shallower waters close in to the land. Only | | | | from the shore in late summer when the mackerel |
| that we have a small boat and the skipper an expert | | | | come in to feed, the cut and thrust of three or four of |
| at manoeuvring her through the difficult waters, can | | | | those muscular bodies pulling on the line is enough to |
| we get in so close, like between the two tall stacks | | | | suggest something potent. Just before they are hauled, |
| that lie to the north where he lay two strings the day | | | | hopefully, clear of the water, the glint of silver and |
| before yesterday. | | | | green as they dart in the same direction, like a flock of |
| I stand at the starboard side and hook the buoy in. | | | | birds swarming, is the closest we can come to |
| Once strung onto the hauler the pots come in regular | | | | grasping the spirit of these creatures. |
| and the process is quick: he empties the pots, whisking | | | | Cooked on a plate lobsters appear skinned, but even in |
| the catch into one box and keeping what's good for | | | | the tanks, meandering slowly and depressingly around |
| bait (conger, dogfish, wrasse); I take them and re-bait | | | | other lobsters they despise, their claws bound so as to |
| them, mostly with the mackerel halves that he salts all | | | | prevent them doing what they would otherwise do- |
| year in a disused freezer on the quay. The bait smells | | | | fight each other to death, possibly even eat each |
| sweet and sour; the lobsters like that. I carry the pots | | | | other, cannibalism being one of their traits- they have |
| to the back of the boat and stack them ready to | | | | none of their natural pied- beauty, that which Manley |
| shoot when we take off again after the next string. | | | | Hopkins described as 'all things counter, original, spare, |
| We're lucky to get a single lobster from a string of | | | | strange'. And there is no doubt lobsters are 'counter'. |
| twenty pots. There are plenty more crabs thrown | | | | Solitary to the point of violence, an asceticism that is |
| without care into fish boxes. They move slowly and | | | | distressing for fishermen as one rarely finds two |
| awkwardly, like robots with dying batteries. Even when | | | | lobsters in the same pot, lobsters are never easy to |
| a claw tears loose there is no sign from the dull crab | | | | find. For a long time now scientists have been |
| that anything untoward has happened. In your hand his | | | | frustrated by the fact that for one stage in their life |
| delicate legs tread the air and his tiny tongue strikes | | | | cycle, a stage when the juvenile lobster is the size of a |
| from a terrifying mouth in quick, darting movements. | | | | baby finger, they disappear. They don't know where |
| When a lobster is first sighted in a pot there is always | | | | they go or why they go, only that for a short period |
| a remark ('There he is'). The blue-black is the dead | | | | they are undetectable, that they become 'cryptic'. |
| give-away. It was only as a twelve year old boy, in a | | | | There are records, now so much a part of popular |
| sea front restaurant, that I discovered that garish pink | | | | history that it is hard to tell fact from fiction, which tell |
| was not the lobster's natural colour. I had wandered | | | | of such a plenitude of lobsters on the East coast of |
| away from the table while the adults talked to the tank | | | | America that they were fed to prisoners. An old map |
| near the entrance. I had thought it was decorative but | | | | from the 16th century showing features of the new |
| found instead a dozen of more lobsters piled on top of | | | | land depicts ranks of lobsters crowded along the |
| one another. As I stared from behind a small palm tree | | | | coast from Rhode Island to Boston and accounts |
| I saw a lady with high heels and presumably her | | | | report of three and four pound lobsters emerging from |
| husband approach the tank with an immaculately | | | | the sea like a scourge. A hundred or more years later, |
| dressed waiter. They laughed and smiled as they | | | | as European cities grew, painters took to portraying |
| pointed at the different lobsters. The waiter rolled up | | | | the lobster as a favoured subject in still lifes. Alongside |
| one of his sleeves and drew out two sedate lobsters. | | | | skulls, hour-glasses and candles, symbols of the |
| He placed them in small, stainless steel pot and carried | | | | ephemeral, and pepper, citrus fruits and nutmeg, |
| them out of the dining room with his sleeve still rolled | | | | symbols of burgeoning global trade and power, the |
| up. The lady kissed the man on the lips and giggled. I | | | | lobster, always fresh cooked and pink, took his place. It |
| didn't realise how brutal all this was at the time but | | | | is not immediately clear, as with the other symbols, |
| something certainly felt odd. Why it is that lobsters | | | | what the lobster represented. Even now the lobster is |
| escape the type of sentiment we apply to other | | | | a rare, expensive item and access to fresh sea food, |
| animals? Ten years later I had supper with a | | | | especially in the cities, must have ensured a high price |
| Norwegian fisherman and his friends. He had kept | | | | three hundred years ago. But it is difficult to imagine |
| aside ten lobsters over the past few weeks for a | | | | that they were so sought after- in Ireland only fifty |
| lobster feast, one of three or four occasions he, or his | | | | years ago they fished with open, French barrels, |
| friends, host during lobster season, which lasts from | | | | allowing the lobsters come and go as they pleased so |
| the beginning of October to New Year's Eve. We ate | | | | plentiful were they. Perhaps then it was temporality; |
| two lobsters a person and drank aquavite from our | | | | the thought that soon the lobster will be consumed, like |
| glasses with the antennae of those very same | | | | fruit or flowers at the height of their bloom, holding in |
| lobsters. A photograph taken towards the end of the | | | | that zenith point the inevitability of decline. But unlike |
| evening shows five red, hysterical faces after the | | | | fruit or flowers the lobster is never known at its height, |
| gorging. | | | | never blue-black and barnacled. |
| Lobsters are adapted to hide amongst the weed and | | | | When they are taken from the pots the slick process |
| rock so their tones and textures, not obliterated by the | | | | of hauling, baiting and stacking is momentarily disturbed |
| boiling water, are much more various and revealing. | | | | because the lobsters must be put somewhere safe. |
| Bio-technology wants to realise the ingenuity and | | | | Unlike the crabs, tossed helter skelter in the fish boxes, |
| potency of these kinds of natural quality. With his well | | | | working on each other with little malice, the lobsters |
| evolved colouring for camouflage, his fitted armour and | | | | have to be kept away from everything. Mostly they |
| ferocious claws, for both cutting and crushing, I can | | | | are passive and immobile, abdomen hanging loose, |
| well imagine the lobster being used as a prototype for | | | | claws unwieldy and useless, like wrenches in the hands |
| some sub-marine weapon in the future. Even now | | | | of young boys, as they are placed on an old net, a |
| there is something peculiarly technical and mechanical | | | | barrel, or even in the cabin window if the other places |
| about the lobster, as if he was run on hydraulics and | | | | are taken. Now and again, from fury or fear, or both, |
| intricate internal mechanisms. This apparent lack of | | | | the lobster flexes his whole body like a spring, rapidly |
| vulnerability is not just a fancy. There is a very strong | | | | pulling the fan at the end of his tail in towards his head. |
| suggestion that lobsters can live forever. Scientists call | | | | The noise is unworldly. From somewhere inside there |
| this remarkable trait 'negligible senescence'. It is thought | | | | is a creaking, something mechanical, or what you might |
| that their slow pace of growth places them in a kind of | | | | imagine alien communication to sound like; a series of |
| parallel time in which years are experienced more like | | | | just perceptible squeaks and blips, and obviously not |
| minutes, not abstractly of course but at the level of | | | | happy. |
| their very flesh. Either way by tarrying with time they | | | | In those moments after being rushed from one world |
| live for an as yet undefined period, a thought which | | | | to another the lobster's shell reflects and refracts |
| immediately conjures up the image of cow-sized | | | | every blue you can imagine. From lightest aquamarine |
| lobsters roaming the deep sea floor, feeding on whale | | | | on the underside, almost yellow tinged, to the darkest, |
| carcasses and ruined ships that take days to simper | | | | most mysterious blue-blacks on top. Some think that |
| down from the surface. | | | | the mysterious blue dyes found in certain rare fabrics |
| Like most marine life the lobster instantly desiccates on | | | | in the Far East originate from the processed shell of |
| being removed from the sea. Through an intense | | | | the lobster, a process we have now lost, or, possibly, a |
| expenditure of energy, at fright and sudden violence, | | | | colour so rare in the lobster itself that we fail to notice |
| he retracts from the world and loses in the meantime | | | | it. There is a quality of unsettling transience in the just |
| the force of his peculiar lustre and shimmer. Perhaps a | | | | caught lobster, the same that makes the sea so |
| rough comparison can be made when the reverse | | | | tantalising. This is the closest we can get to the tide |
| happens to humans. As flesh hits the cold water there | | | | change, when flow turns to ebb, the point that |
| is a tightening, a withdrawal, and, left long enough, a | | | | seventeenth century painters from Haarlem, if indeed |
| gradual disintegration of colour, texture and form as | | | | set on illustrating the transience of life, might better |
| the salt and cold work on unthreading a once vibrant | | | | have found if they had set to sea for lobsters. |