Red Lobster for the Seafood Farmer in You?

They've been selling them for more than 40 years. But now the
Orlando, Florida-based owner of Red Lobster restaurants is trying
to do something no one has ever done on a large commercial scale:
grow them.

Lobster farming won't be easy, if it can be done at all. Lobsters
are tough to raise in captivity. They take a long time to grow,
eat a lot and are susceptible to a contagious, fatal disease. But
if Darden Restaurants can make its project work, it could
revolutionize the way lobsters get to our dinner plates.

Growing lobsters could make them a cheaper commodity, experts
say, much like aquaculture did for shrimp and salmon. But it
could also create hardship for lobster fishermen around the
world. There also are concerns about the environmental impact of
capturing young lobsters to grow them on aquaculture farms, which
it appears Darden would do at least initially.

Last month, a subsidiary called Darden Aquafarm signed an
agreement with the government in Brunei, near Malaysia. Bill
Herzig, a Darden senior vice president who heads Darden Aquafarm,
was quoted in the Brunei Times as saying the company hopes
research there will lead to "a commercial lobster grow-out
project which can feed the world market, obviously from Brunei."

But even though Darden's lobster farms are planned overseas,
where clawless lobsters are much different from their iconic,
big-clawed, Maine counterparts, New England lobstermen worry that
farming would lower lobster market prices, already hammered by
the economy. "You want to be able to feed the world, but you also
want to be able to afford to go fishing," said Robin Alden,
executive director of the Penobscot East Resource Center, a
nonprofit organization that advocates for Maine fishing communities.

In the northern Atlantic, lobster aquaculture is considered
especially difficult because the creatures take five to seven
years to grow, and they tend to attack one another. Spiny, or
rock, lobsters found in other areas are considered easier
candidates for farming because they can be raised more easily in
groups and don't take as long to mature.