Lobstermen are candidly looking for sex

• I'll come right out and admit it: I have the hots for an animal. She's a curvaceous creature, with a tough exterior but tender and irresistible innards. I've been chasing tail among her kind for years. So have most of my former colleagues, the rugged, manly lobstermen of Main What kind of sick people are you, you might ask, to have intimate relations with lady lobsters of childbearing age? We're, um, conservationists. And now so are you.
• That's right: This year, Maine's peculiar lobster preservation practices are being officially imported to Long Island Sound. It may sound like the arrival of something raunchy from the sticks, but don't worry, it's actually cutting-edge fisheries management. And after the death and destruction that the Sound's lobsters have suffered, a healthy obsession with sex might be just what the doctor ordered.
• It's been eight sad years now since Mother Nature and mankind conspired to unleash a hellish calamity on the Sound's lobsters. Experts still debate the causes, but what we do know is that between 1998 and 2000, below the rippling surface, a "perfect storm" of fiendish forces swirled together in the depths - sweltering temperatures, oxygen depletion, hurricane rain, toxic pesticides and an infestation of nasty, parasitic amoebas. To this day, those events are known simply as The Die-Off. In the blink of an eye, crowds of helpless lobsters perished, and the Sound's lobster industry was wiped off the map.
• Today, the few lobsters that remain in the Sound survive in a precarious situation. They live on the southern edge of the American lobster's range, in waters that are a bit too warm, secluded from the larger gene pool, their numbers decimated. Nearly a decade has passed with little improvement. Under these circumstances, importing the sex-obsessed habits of Maine lobstermen seems worth a try.
• In Maine, when a lobsterman hauls in a trap, he looks up the lady lobsters' skirts. If he finds a female laden with eggs, he grasps her appreciatively with one hand, and with the other, reaches for his knife. With two swift thrusts, he slices a tiny triangular nick out of one of the flippers on her tail. The nick is shaped like a V, so he calls it a "V-notch." If you're visiting Maine, this term can be used in a sentence, such as: "She has a real nice V-notch."
• When the lobsterman is finished cutting the notch, he gives his lady lobster a look full of longing, then slips her back into the sea. Once she is notched, no fisherman can violate this lobster's right to life - even if she isn't bearing eggs next time she's caught. She's become a kind of fertility goddess, and the V-notch is her free pass to more procreation.
• Outside of Maine, other lobstermen also toss back egg-bearing lobsters. But the peculiar act of marking a female lobster with a notch, to protect her beyond that initial pregnancy, is an invention unique to Maine's craggy coast.
• So yes, I do find these nicely notched females rather arousing. That's not simply because I'm excited by the idea of underwater hanky-panky. It's also because I worked for a couple of years on a Maine lobster boat. I witnessed this V-notching routine regularly, sometimes several times a day. And I saw the results, both through my own eyes, and through the eyes of scientists studying the lobster population.
• Thanks to V-notching, the floor of the ocean in the Gulf of Maine is teeming with gangs of large mother lobsters. Many factors affect the health of a fishery, but lobstermen in Maine can take pride that their fishery has not lacked for a supply of fresh eggs.
• While stocks of other sea life have been obliterated by overfishing, the lobster fishery in Maine has thus far replenished itself and been a story of sustainability. Lobstermen in other American states and Canada have taken note. A few years back, lobstermen in Rhode Island began V-notching females in the hope of reviving the population there after a crash.
• And now Connecticut lobstermen in Long Island Sound have decided to start V-notching - not just egg-bearing lobsters, but 60,000 lucky ladies, regardless of whether they're pregnant. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the combined federal and state governing body that administers regulations for the Northeast lobster fisheries, approved the plan last month. State funds have been designated to help in the effort, as will an army of high-school interns, who are scheduled to go out on the boats at the outset of the fall run in late October.
• So far, lobstermen from New York aren't required to cut notches of their own. But everywhere, notched lobsters must be thrown back. Penalties for keeping them range from fines to confinement to license suspension.
• Is this plan to boost the population of fertile females a cure-all? No, it's not. No plan could be, after what the lobsters of the Sound have suffered. But there are glimmers of hope. Lobstermen are reporting more baby lobsters at the eastern end of the Sound, and it's not a stretch to speculate that Rhode Island's V-notching program may have contributed to the improvement.
• Another benefit of V-notching is that it's likely to populate the Sound with larger females - capable of producing eggs more often and in vastly greater quantities than smaller lobsters. A notch can prevent a lobster from ending up as dinner for a couple of years, allowing her time to grow.
• A flaw inherent to V-notching is that each time the lobster sheds her shell to grow, the notch becomes less distinct. Eventually it will disappear. Many lobstermen in Maine re-cut a fading notch when they find one, to extend the lobster's grace period until the creature exceeds Maine's maximum size for legal consumption. Once there, the lobster is protected by the law forever and will continue making babies for decades. A similar size cap might be worth trying in Long Island Sound, too.
• In the meantime, I hope Connecticut's young females are fruitful and that they multiply. And perhaps the lobstermen of New York, too, will discover the pleasure of grasping a tail, reaching for a knife and then commenting with admiration, "She has a real nice V-notch." (Trevor Corson, NY Newsday)