To many, it may seem that the lobster’s most natural habitat is on
a large, oval plate between a cup of drawn butter and a lemon wedge.
In
fact, only a few of the hundreds of types of lobster are caught
commercially. But those few species are some of the most heavily
harvested creatures in the sea, and generate a multi-billion-dollar
industry, with more than 200,000 tons (181,436 metric tons) of annual
global catch.
The lobsters that most people know from their dinner plates are the American and European clawed lobsters Homarus americanus and Homarus gammarus.
These are cold water species that live on either sides of the northern
Atlantic Ocean. There are also tropical lobsters that are widely
consumed, but these are generally clawless varieties called spiny and
slipper lobsters.
