Monster SD Bay Lobster - 11-25-2011

[KeptMan]

I caught this fellow, again well within reach of paddlers but none were around. I ended up donating hi to Scrips Acquarium.

[Matt]

Nice!!!!!

[Hunter (The 80's Man)]

Nice bug.

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by KeptMan

I caught this fellow, again well within reach of paddlers but none were around. I ended up donating hi to Scrips Acquarium.

Nice Bug..

Is that a Western skiff? Looks like Western 16. Love those boats.

Jim

["jjcawjj"]

Wow! Very nice!

[William Novotny]

I hope you at least kept the old milwaukee

[deepdvr]

Solid bugs!!!

[Bob Madore]

I'm sure Scripps enjoyed the lobster dinner.

[KeptMan]

The thought crossed my mind that I might be feeding some poor biologist. Having done four years of biology before engineering, either way it was a donation ($40-K per year doesn't go far when fishing gear comes into play).

Hopefully it wasn't to the same idiot that recommended sinking the dead whale off of La Jolla in 2,500-feet of water (anoxic to start with) to locally increase the BOD/ COD and subsequently kill all the fauna within a 10-square mile radius. Probably the same idiots that sponsor the MLPA nonsense.

[grey zone]

That's a big female!

[KeptMan]

I didn't spend much time with crayfish while studying biology. Please enlighten us. I catch enough most evenings that I would be game to let the big girls go so our kids can enjoy paddling and bugs too.

[grey zone]

The finlets on the underside of the tail overlap. On males they dont, most of the lobsters you see in that size range are all males.

[GHOSTHUNTR]

Small one female, big one male.

[grey zone]

The lobster he is holding is female.

[GHOSTHUNTR]

Check the last pair of legs on both. Females actually have two little claws that act like a hand on the last pair. This helps them to tend to the eggs under the swimmerettes. Bigger males have bigger underfins, but the swimmerettes on a female will cover the entire tail section. Male lobsters only have the one sharp claw on the end of the last pair.

[grey zone]

The swimmerettes on males do not touch or overlap. Unless I'm being deceived by the picture the swimmerettes on that lobster all overlap.

[Limits]

Nice catch and kudos on donating it to Scripps...

Definitely a female.

[KeptMan]

Thanks to all of you who replied on the sexing question. We are so privileged to be able collect these so easily and I will certainly be more careful on the take. This is such a cool fishery but I think I'd endorse having a slot limit on these things.

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by grey zone

The lobster he is holding is female...... The swimmerettes on males do not touch or overlap..

Sometimes the internet just blows me away. Where do people come up with this Stuff!

Though the smaller bug is female, the big lobster is obviously a male!!

The swimmerets would be at least a third larger on a female, it has male sex organs, but more importantly for those who want something obvious, the last set of legs closest to the tail would have little claws on them if it was a female.

It's obvious from his pic.



Look a the rear legs on both bugs and note the difference.

Female lobsters have these claws so they can move eggs around on their tail. I would think anyone whose seen more then a handful of lobsters would know that difference it's just so obvious. Males do not have the little claws, they have no use for them.

The big lobster has single points on it's last set of legs at the tail. On the inside of those legs there are two gelatinous fleshy nobs that are it's male sex organs. It's tail is small in relation to it's carapace mass, which is not the case with females. Females need bigger tails to carry more eggs. Add to that...that almost every lobster caught that size off California would be male just do to simple biology. Big Bull lobster over eight pounds are almost always males. That's why they call them bulls not cows.

So basically anyone who's handled any lobster of any size would know right away it's male.

Here's a female with eggs..




You might want to notice how the swimmerets are not only bigger but double layered and kind of pointed. The legs closest to the tail are not pointed, because the have a little claw on them. Notice how far apart those legs are where they connect to it's body. How they make an upside down V were it connects to the tail. Now look again at his pic.

His bugs legs are pointed and the connection at the body is longer so the insides of the legs almost touch. No V shape, but instead two knobs which just happen to be male sex organs.

That lobster is definitely male!!!

Jim

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by grey zone

The swimmerettes on males do not touch or overlap. Unless I'm being deceived by the picture the swimmerettes on that lobster all overlap.

I did some checking going through some of my old pics, and it kind of confirmed what I already thought. The swimmerets on male bugs seem to vary in size quite a bit in ratio to the the size of the tail, and there seems to be a correlation to the size of the bug with larger bugs having proportionally smaller swimmerets.

Though they are not ever as big as those on females in some cases the swimmerets on male bugs overlap in some cases they do not.

If I had to guess there is a point where they quit increasing in size as the male bug molts and grows so they end up looking smaller and smaller in really large bugs.

Maybe what's throwing you is the size of his bug. Looks like he's holding it out quite a bit.

On really huge male bugs the swimmerets are usually much smaller in relation to the size of the tail, so you are sort of right even though you're wrong about the sex

Really huge bugs have changes in features you can recognize no matter how someone holds it.

Here's a good size bug I caught, held up by my friend Hugh.




As you can see on that bug the swimmerettes look tiny, but also look at the ratio of it's carapace length to width, and how thick the legs are. Hugh's a big guy.Those legs on that bug where at places over an inch in diameter.

Once bugs get big around nine pounds they kind of start to fill out, or get "shoulders"

If I had to guess by just looking at it's features I'd say KM's bug is well under 8.5 pounds, maybe even around 5 or 6, where the bug Hugh is holding is well over ten pounds.

At any rate they are both still males.

Here's a crappy image for telling spiny lobster sex..



Not the best picture, but you might want to notice the claws on the females legs. Also as you can see they've drawn swimmerets that though smaller then the females, they can still overlap on the male bug.

I'd say judging Lobster sex by the size of a lobsters swimmerets is lot like trying to determine a persons sex by the length of their legs. Sure women proportionally have longer legs but it's not the legs but what's between them that determines sex.

Jim