If you are fascinated by lobsters and have a great interest in life both under the sea as well as what goes on right above the water level where the fishermen live then this book is going to be 100% for you. This was a fantastic, informative read but I couldn’t help but feel that the information about the Lobsters could have been condensed down by about 100 pages and the information about the lobstermen was so confusing and hard to connect with that it should have been mostly omitted.

*Light Spoilage*

I’ll just start by saying WTF was going on with all of the extreme details about lobster sex intermingled with weird euphemisms and metaphors. Trevor Corson did not have to go so hard. He consistently vacillated between describing the creatures in weirdly human terms and then directly after mentioning how the scientists mutilated and abused the creatures in the name of science. I was incredibly impressed by the extensive research that Corson obviously did in order to write this book and I feel like I learned a whole lot about lobster anatomy, life cycle, and most of all reproduction, but he did it in a very strange way.

*HEAVY SPOILS*

Ultimately I learned a lot. I understand how the lobster fishery learned to self regulate, how the lobstermen learned that lobsters are not going sparse but instead their life cycle is just dependent on the weather and most of all I learned how lobsters communicate with each other and pick a mate. This book was wildly fascinating but if you can resist skimming the bits about fisherman relationships or cringing at the parts describing lobsters abusing one another.. then you are a stronger man than I.

I would give this one 5 stars for the research but it lost a star for the lack of flow and extra fluff and a another partial star for confusing jumping around bits. Leaving it with a 3.7