If it's not Homarus, it's not true lobster. Rock lobster,
spiny lobster, slipper lobster, Caribbean lobster—all of them are merely wannabes,
riding on the fame of the authentic Maine lobster, Homarus americanus.
Look Ma, New Hands
It can take seven years for a lobster to reach a weight of one pound
in the wild. Those huge lobsters of colonial times might have been
a century old. However, size is not a reliable indicator of age as
lobsters grow more slowly in cold water, when food is scarce, or
when they’re regenerating a body part. Unlike most creatures,
lobsters can regrow lost claws and antennae.
You
can recognize members of the Homarus genus—true
lobsters—by their five sets of legs, including a pair of large, meat-filled claws.
Marine scientists have identified many species of Homarus but only two of commercial
importance: H. americanus, found most plentifully off the coast of Maine;
and H. gammarus, the European lobster, found from the North Atlantic
to the Mediterranean. The European lobster resembles Maine's but is much more
scarce, so a lot of Maine lobster is shipped to Europe.
The warm-water crustaceans known as spiny or rock lobsters—found off the coast of Florida and southern California and in the Caribbean—have
no claws and thus no delectable claw meat. Their edible meat comes from their
tail. Most of the frozen lobster tails in the marketplace are from spiny lobsters.
