I met this two pound fellow on our beach during the latest spring tide.
Lobsters in Brittany are famous for their culinary properties and for their deep blue colour. Some rare ones are even turquoise blue due to a genetic mistake similar to albinism. These ones are particularly praised by large aquariums throughout the world.
When I stumble upon a lobster at the beach, experience has taught me not to touch any one of the claws, because the lobster will immediately eject it away from its body in order to escape more easily. The animal will then regenerate a complete new claw over the coming weeks. This possibility is enabled by the same mechanism that allows the lobster to moult. Since the lobster shield is rigid, it can not grow as the lobster ages and so it has to be thrown away once a year and replaced by a new larger one that the lobster will create. The new shield will take a few days to become hard solid; during that time the lobster is totally vulnerable to predators and has to find a very safe corner to lay put.
We all know here that if we find a lobster in its grotto, there is a reasonable chance that we can also find a conger eel in the same hole. We believe that the cohabitation works as follows. The conger eel always brings its prey back to its hole in order to eat it, therefore the lobster effortlessly gets the crumbles of the conger meal. On the other end, the conger eel tolerates the lobster in its hole expecting the short moulting period when the lobster will become shieldless and thus easily edible. So the lobster gets a free lunch 99% of the year, but at the expense of a large risk to its life during the remaining 1%.
