Lobster Catch-22

Remember Bubba, the 22 pound lobster that drew so much sympathy from potential buyers that he was eventually sent to a zoo where he died? A similar situation has developed for seafood store owner Jeff Grolig, who recently ordered a "large lobster" for the tank of his Potomac store. Instead of a large lobster he got a 15 pound monster that elicited much sympathy from customers, one of whom has bought the lobster so it can be set free. There is, however, a catch, or two:

But sometimes even the best of intentions backfire. From the business perspective, returning lobsters to the wild could help spur demand for them, said Joe Stofer, seafood manager for Whole Foods Market Inc. in the mid-Atlantic region.

"If a store keeps selling these big lobsters to people who take them out and let them go, the merchants simply think they're selling a lot of lobsters," Stofer said. "So they buy more."

And the rescues do not always work ... Bubba ended up in a quarantined tank at the zoo on March 1. But he died less than 24 hours later, presumably from the stress of being moved many times.

"Trying to save these really large lobsters that way is kind of a misguided thing to do because so many of them die anyway," said Diane Cowan, a senior scientist at the Lobster Conservancy, a nonprofit group in Maine that studies lobster fisheries. "If you really want to protect these animals, you should not harvest them in the first place."

Catch 'em and eat 'em, and there is no lobster Catch-22. Pass the butter.