Transportation of Lobsters
to California – 1874

The following is the report of M. L. Perrin, employed by Mr. Livingston Stone, for the California Fish Commission, in the transportation of live lobsters upon the California aquarium car, June, 1874. —[S. F. Baird.]

The lobsters were procured from Messrs. Johnson & Young's lobster house, Charlestown Street bridge, Boston, and pains were taken by these gentlemen to give all the aid in their power toward the undertaking. Upon a special car from Boston to Charlestown, N. H., June 3, were packed the 150 lobsters in seven pine boxes 3J feet long, 15 inches wide, and 15 inches deep. The boxes were divided into two compartments, an upper and a lower, by a partition, making two tiers, and 11 lobsters were placed in each tier, save one.

On this trip to Charlestown they were not packed with straw beneath them, but lay upon the wood, with sponges over and around them. We were sorry at the time for this mistake, but from experiments afterward I decided that they were as well situated as if laid upon straw. Six casks of ocean-water, each containing 149 gallons, were obtained that morning and loaded upon the car. Most of the sea-water was put into the two salt-water tanks in the aquarium-car. These tanks were made of hard wood and smeared with a mixture of resin and tallow in order to be water-tight, and during part of the overland journey salt-water fish were in these tanks. One cask of sea-water was loaded, unopened, upon the aquarium-car to be used for the lobsters during the last days of the trip, that from the tanks being used for awhile.

The sea-water was obtained outside Boston Harbor, beyond the "Graves," in order that it might be purer. That which had been got two days previously for the same purpose was procured from Nahant, but the aquarium-car not starting that day made it necessary to get some more so as to have it fresh. We procured 35 pounds of sponges, most of which were used in the beginning before many lobsters had died, but afterward were not needed. The sponges were soaked with salt water, and each lobster was completely hidden by the wet sponges. Salt water was poured upon all the lobsters, and all the sponges newly wetted once during the trip to Charlestown. The lobsters were all alive when reaching Charlestown.

At Charlestown, Thursday morning, June 4, the lobsters were taken from the boxes in which they had been brought from Boston and repacked in boxes without covers, divided by partitions into twelve apartments. The surface extent of these apartments was just enough to admit one lobster lying within it—smaller than was well for them. The depth of the apartments was about 6 inches, and the bottoms were bored with an auger-hole to allow drainage. A handful of wet straw was put in each apartment and a lobster laid upon it, then sponges dripping with salt water were placed above and around-it until quite concealed from sight and from dry air by this stratum of wet sponges.

There were twelve of these boxes, each containing twelve above-described apartments, placed in the aquarium-car, one upon another, in two piles of six boxes each, against the side of the car. In going over the lobsters twice a day, the boxes were taken down and the sponges were removed from the lobsters one at a time and squeezed over the animal, which, if alive, will respond to it by blinking its eyes and stretching its claws, perhaps moving its body a little.

The sponges were then dipped into a pailful of sea-water and wetted again, and were carefully arranged as before about the lobster. Pieces of ice which another person had been breaking up meanwhile were strewn over each box, among the apartments and sponges, to keep cool the water in the sponges and the moisture in the straw and around the lobster. It was slow work, and the lobsters were too much exposed during the operations. Often, after the boxes were piled up again, pailsful of salt water were poured over the whole. During the first two or three days only a few were found dead when they were repacked.

At noon, Saturday, June 6, sixty lobsters were put into one of the large salt-water tanks with the striped bass and some other salt-water fish. Into this tank, as into all the others, air was continually forced through hose from the air force-pumps, kept in motion by a band passing around the axle of a pair of the car-wheels. The lobsters in this salt water, the next morning, at Chicago, appeared to be doing very well; but Sunday afternoon the lid of this tank was discovered to have fallen, and upon raising it all the lobsters were found dead. The fish also in the tank were dead.

Whether the falling of the lid was the cause of their death, we could not quite decide; but it seemed very probable that it was because the air pumped into the tank after the lid fell, having no means of escape at the top of the tank, exerted a great pressure upon the water and in this way killed them, and also because of the impure air which was confined inside for some time without being replaced by purer.

The fact that the fish died also shows that it was some external calamity common to them both. The wooden tanks, the mixture of resin and tallow, though but little, with which the tank was smeared, the number in one tank, and the company with the fish, are also variable quantities whose effects might be discussed relative to this result and also to the result of the experiment which was thus checked. Therefore this case should not be considered a fair experiment and as deciding whether lobsters cannot be transported healthily, in an open tank of salt water, into which air is continually forced, without changing the salt water itself, and kept constantly at a low temperature. I neglected to mention that upon the top of the tank much ice had been kept and stored; in this way keeping the salt water within the tank quite cold without freshening it and diluting it, which would have been caused by ice put into the salt water to cool it. The death of these sixty reduced the number of lobsters materially.

About this time on, the trip slats were laid upon the two piles of lobster-boxes, and about 500 pounds of ice kept on them, when the lobsters were not being attended to. Lobsters will live well until the fourth or fifth day, but in the present case, if at any time of repacking them I did not find from one-third to one-half of the residue dead each time, I considered it very fortunate. I went over them twice a day; so that if, at every time of repacking, one-third to one-half were to be thrown away, the number of live lobsters would be rapidly reduced, as was indeed the case. Monday, June 8, there were only 20 left alive.

Nor is there any regularity in their dying; those treated the most carefully and faithfully die as readily as the neglected; and those handled much live as well as the undisturbed. After the fifth day crowds of lobsters take offense at something, and revenge themselves by dying. The reason of their death was wrapt in mystery. Numerous experiments always failed to bring any regular results, and nothing certain could be gleaned from them. Theorizing about lobsters' chances of life is vain when applied in practice. There seems to be a wide diversity in their constitutions, though unseen and imperceptible.

Certain lobsters live well and persistently, while others destined to die beforehand do so irregularly and for an unassignable cause. It is easy to decide whether a lobster is dead. If so, its muscles are all relaxed, and when lifted up, its claws, instead of remaining horizontally out from the body, hang down. This is especially true of the large front claws, but not always of the small ones, which sometimes hang down when the lobster is alive, or are straightened when dead; the front claws, however, are decisive. If, on the other hand, the creature is alive, it will sometimes move its long feelers when the sponge is lifted, and move its claws, and often its body; but the constant as well as sure criterion is that when a sponge full of salt water is squeezed over its head, it will always answer it by blinking or drawing in its eyes, if alive. When lifted it will struggle; but it is a bad plan to raise them, unless necessary, though this is better than to molest and agitate too much, without lifting them, when arranging the sponges or ice about them.

We were using a good deal of salt water, and Monday, the fifth day from starting, it became evident that we had not enough on board for the whole journey. We disliked to use the salt water from the tanks in which fish were or had been; and there was not much of that. Therefore we opened the reserve cask of 149 gallons of unused salt water, and telegraphed the same day to the commissioners of California to send by freight some Pacific Ocean water to meet us on the route as soon as possible.

Being afraid that the ice which I was in the habit of putting around the sponges and among the apartments was, by its melting and the resultant water, making too fresh the atmosphere with which the lobsters were surrounded, inasmuch as it diluted the salt water, I tried with some the effect of leaving off the ice for a few times. The results were not satisfactory, and proved that omitting the ice was not a good thing; the lobsters would not do as well without it. The coldness gained by using the ice was even more indispensable than the saltness of the water, which of course must be quite necessary.

It is not well to use too small pieces of broken ice, because they melt more rapidly; and in order to exert the required influence in producing coldness, the pieces of ice must be so near the lobsters that, in melting as fast as small pieces do, the salt water in and around the sponges becomes more freshened than if larger pieces of ice were used. It is much better that the ice, in either case, should not touch the sponges, if the requisite coldness can be attained without, and if room is abundant; and still better would it be if the ice could be so arranged that, while producing the necessary low temperature, the water resulting from its melting should not mingle with the salt water nor strike anything connected with the lobsters.

There can be no doubt but that having as low a temperature as possible is one of the greatest desiderata in the care of lobsters. A refrigerating apparatus would avoid the troubles with the ice spoken of above and be much more effectual than the primitive method followed on this trip.

The protection which the ice provided in this case against currents of warm air was not thorough and complete, and great harm was surely done at the places and times where the defense was insufficient; and still more grew out of the fickleness of its protection. Every time the car-doors were opened or the atmosphere around the lobster-boxes disturbed, there inevitably rushed upon them a draught of warm and dry but injurious air, fatal at once to a lobster in case the current strikes it. There must be some medium, as a wide or at least constant stratum of moist atmosphere, to guard the lobster against this destructive air; and at the same time that it would prevent this evil, it should produce the needed low temperature.

A refrigerating arrangement would naturally make the care of the lobsters much more convenient as well as more successful. Sometimes when lobsters died I put ice in the apartments left by them instead of upon the sponges of the live lobsters. The dripping of this ice upon the apartments below was not good; but when the lobsters were few in number, I arranged them so that the ice apartments all came under each other, and their dripping did not affect the lobsters. This plan seemed to work favorably for the lobsters. I doubt if it was best to do as was done with the boxes on this trip. Two small sticks were laid across the top of each box before the next was placed upon it. In this way a circulation of fresh air was secured, but I suspect that other qualities in the air counterbalanced this, and did much harm.

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