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Effective Ways For Transporting A Live Lobster

By Jeffrey Murphy


A lobster that is cooked when it is still fresh happens to be a delicacy for most people. Among other ways of preparing it, cooking when alive is one of the best ways. It is not a simple task to transport them as they are used to environments of cold salty water. Creating such an environment in your tool of transportation is quite difficult. Delivering a live lobster to your place therefore takes good planning.

Getting lobsters home alive from a fish market or grocery store requires some planning if you are to get the ultimate results. The important thing that you should consider while shipping lobsters to your home is to ensure that they are cool and moist at whichever time. Most common cause of death during shipping is deprivation of oxygen. The importance of keeping the lobsters cool is that they use less amount of oxygen.

Oxygen consumption is at a high rate with the lobsters in environments of high temperatures. This then puts them at a death risk. Moisture is therefore quite essential for them breathing as we all know they use gills. When handled properly, it becomes easy to keep a hard-shelled lobster breathing for a maximum period of five days, outside water.

Ensuring that lobsters are moist does not mean that they get kept submerged in water. They are in fact better placed to survive when not in water while being transported. Directly packing them on top of ice is not advised as this will bring them problems when it melts up. Dry ice produces a lot of carbon dioxide, which would cause the lobster to asphyxiate. They also tend to swell and burst when kept in fresh water.

Shipping in seawater is not ideal, not unless the tank is outfitted with equipment that provide aeration. Lack of aeration leads to a lobster using up the dissolved oxygen in a faster rate, which leads to suffocation. Use of refrigerated trucks are ideal as they maintain the right temperature and moisture.

It is necessary for the lobsters to be kept cool for a while before they are packed so as to attain positive outcome. The main reason for doing this is in order to avoid acclimatization, which happens when they are moved from warm temperatures abruptly to cold ones. Being known to possess the ability of handling change of temperatures well, we should also have in mind that they will not do so well if the change is rapid.

It is also advised not to feed them for two or three days before shipping them. They use more oxygen and have a high chance of vomiting when transported on full stomach. One should also ensure that he or she packs them closely, though they should not be too tight as their shells might break during transportation.

Boiling them alive immediately is important as they go bad quickly. However, one can preheat then freeze them. This will help them stay fresh for about four days. Take care when preparing preserved ones so as not to overcook and end up hardening them.




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