
Researchers develop new way to determine age of lobsters
CBC
Researchers in England believe they've cracked the code of understanding lobster age, a finding they say could someday help lead to a more sustainable fishery.
Unlike fish, which have tiny stones in their ears with rings that can be counted to determine age, or deer, which can be aged by their teeth, there isn't a decisive way to tell how old a lobster is.
Fishermen often estimate the age of lobsters based on their size.
But Martin Taylor, who is an associate professor in the school of biological sciences at the University of East Anglia and one of the authors of a new study on lobster aging, said that's not a very accurate method.
"Lobsters have got very different growth rates among individuals. So individual A might grow very, very rapidly and then individual B might grow very, very slowly.... So it's really almost impossible to age lobsters currently."
Other methods, such as examining proteins in a lobster's brain, or growth rings in its eye stalks, cannot be used on a living lobster.
Taylor and the research team have developed a DNA-based method of pinpointing the age of younger lobsters to within 1.6 months. The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Applications.