So a Canadian lobster walks into an English bar– er, bay, and he kind of scuttles. Anyway, despite whatever punchline you might’ve been expecting, there’s a story out there that Canadian lobsters are showing up in English waters, and not because they were in the mood for a 3,000-mile swim. No, the recent influx of foreign crustaceans is said to be the fault of guilty diners crossing the Atlantic on cruise ships — if the stories are to believed.

The Homarus Americanus species of lobster has been showing up in the pots of fishermen in Yorkshire, reports the Daily Mail (and the Yorkshire Post citing an example from a few years ago), which is especially bad for the lobsters as they can’t breed with local species and likely won’t survive long in UK waters.

As for how they’re getting there, one theory circulating in the media is that do-gooder cruise ship passengers are ordering live lobsters and then telling waiters to throw them overboard in a misguided attempt to save the creatures.

Some of the lobsters are showing up with their claws still bound with rubber bands, say tale-tellers, but that’s only one problem — they could be bringing disease with them, and even if they do mate with local species, their offspring will be infertile, according to someone the Daily Mail quotes as being a rep from a fishing industry trade group.

“We think the most likely route is that they are getting thrown overboard from cruise ships,” he said. “People buy lobster for dinner, feel sorry for it and ask the waiter to chuck it over. In the grand scheme of things that’s a very small level of re-introduction.”

If you’ve got the itch to become a lobster savior, it’s best you don’t bother, he adds.

“They won’t last much longer than if the passengers had eaten them for dinner.”

As an observant Consumerist reader points out, this scenario sounds a bit unlikely — would waiters be allowed to chuck lobsters, alive or no, overboard? And would they do so at the behest of diners?

Who knows — the fishermen quote by the Yorkshire Post last saw an errant lobster a few years ago, so perhaps, if true, it’s a rarer occurrence than media stories are currently suggesting.

Canadian lobsters discovered off coast of YORKSHIRE: Experts blame cruise ship diners trying to ‘save’ animals by throwing them overboard [Daily Mail]
Not wanted on voyage: Canadian lobsters found off Yorkshire coast [Yorkshire Post]

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