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Fish Motorcycles
The International Seafood Show is surreal. A bizarro combo of sea critters and commerce, it takes place at the cavernous Boston Convention Center, which I visited last week while in town to be interviewed for a documentary film at the nearby New England Aquarium. On display was this machine called the “Shrimpster.” I’m having a hard time…
Read MoreThe Rites of Spring
I know spring is here when my former boss, lobsterman Bruce Fernald of Little Cranberry Island, Maine, loads his pickup truck with this many traps. His wife Barb snapped this photo the other day, just as Bruce was heading for the harbor to begin the year’s fishing. Bruce and Barb are both real-life characters depicted…
Read MoreWhale: To Eat or Not to Eat?
On Sunday, the documentary film The Cove, which exposes dolphin hunting in Japan, won an Oscar. On Tuesday, the film’s production team attracted front-page coverage in the New York Times with a cleverly timed sting that exposed whale sushi being served not in Japan, as you might expect, but in Santa Monica. Almost two decades ago in Japan,…
Read MoreFashion Trend Update
The paparazzi have spotted a new fashion trend this week when recording artist Lady Gaga and author Trevor Corson were both photographed wearing lobsters on their heads. Gaga sported hers as she emerged from her limousine to attend her after-show party in London, and Corson was apparently wearing his when he emerged from his Brooklyn…
Read MoreIn Vegas, Anything Goes, Except …
This sign was brought to my attention by the ever-vigilant experts at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, after they spotted it on the blog Oddly Specific. The blogger comments: “Something has to be illegal in Nevada.” The post reads: This is one of those things I had to look up, just to make…
Read MoreKinky Sea Slug
A “nudibranch” is not, it turns out, a local public library where patrons walk around without any clothes, as I’d always believed. “Nudibranch” actually refers to a “taxonomic clade of soft-bodied, shell-less marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusks noted for their often extraordinary colors and striking forms,” according to Wikipedia – a description that I still think…
Read MoreOne of the Small Perks of Being a Sushi Concierge
Being a Sushi Concierge is hard work—last night I hosted a nearly 3-hour dinner for ten guests at my Monday-night dinner class series at Jewel Bako restaurant. But there are some perks. I don’t get to eat during the meal, but the maître d’ wouldn’t let me leave without taking a box of sushi home myself.…
Read MoreSustainable Sushi Strains Couples in Therapy
In case you missed this from an article in the New York Times the other day titled “Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes”: Mr. Fleming, who says he became committed to Ms. Cobb “before her high-priestess phase,” describes their conflicts as good-natured — mostly. But he refuses to go out to eat sushi with her anymore,…
Read MoreLobster Side Dish: Bricks, or Oysters?
Bricks are not delicious. Oysters are delicious. Both are heavy. Heaviness is what you need for a lobster trap to sink to the bottom of the sea and stay there. When I worked as a lobsterboat crewman in Maine, numerous winter days were spent outfitting new traps with heavy bricks. But the lobstermen pictured above, who are…
Read MoreMerry Christmas, from Karen and Daisy
Karen: So what’s this big news, then? Daisy: We’ve been given our parts in the nativity play. And I’m the lobster. Karen: The lobster? Daisy: Yeah! Karen: In the nativity play? Daisy: Yeah, first lobster. Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus? Daisy: Duh. —Love Actually
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