Scubaism

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.