Lobster Trap Scarf

Here's the turn-in post for my Muggle Studies assignment.

Hello, Professors! During my study of the Muggle fishing industry, I happened upon a subset thereof, the Lobstering Industry. Lobstering started as an industry in the early 1600s in the Eastern United States and Canada. Unlike today, where lobster is a delicacy, it was considered something you might eat if you really couldn't find anything else. (There are even stories of indentured servants having it written into their contracts that they could not be served lobster more than twice a week.) The industry really picked up in the 1700s, where custom-made boats with open holding wells on deck, allowed live lobsters to be shipped (fresh lobster - still a Good Thing after 400+ years!). Flash forward 200 years, and the most common type of lobster trap is a wooden parlor trap. (Wooden parlor traps were the forerunners of today’s wire parlor traps.) There is a minimum size of lobster you can trap, you can't trap female egg-bearing lobsters (so there will be more later!). The largest lobster, according to Guiness Book of World Records, caught off Nova Scotia. It was listed as 44 lbs 6 oz with a length, from the tip of its tail to the tip of its crusher claw, at 3 ½ feet. The industry earns in the billions every year, even with strict conservation measures, and is worked mostly by individuals and small cooperatives.

I decided to try my hand at trapping my own lobster, by making a Lobster Trap Scarf. I put the trap out....



... and sure enough, it worked!!



There are also Lobstering Cruises, where you can go get your very own lobster. It sounds a bit dangerous, but it could be interesting. I think, though, that my little Lobster Trap works just fine!