kelpmermaid once bubbled...
the Zen koan about whether a tree falling in the forest makes noise if there is no one there to hear it. What else are they doing down there when we are not looking
A few summers ago, we were out on my buddy Matt's boat. We headed out to bait his traps before heading over to Jeremy's Point in Cape Cod Bay to hang out for low tide.
We had 4 or so lobsters, and Matt decides to put 'em in one trap, and come back for them when we were coming back in, since we didn't have anyplace to leave them all day.
The conversation went something like this:
Me: Dude, what are you doing?
Matt: Sticking 'em in the trap so they'll be here when we get back.
Me: They can leave anytime they want.
Matt: No they can't
Sue: Matt, I spent about 20 hours this week watching videos of lobsters coming and going through traps.
Matt: BS
Sue: Whatever!
We got back about 6 hours later.
There was only one left in the trap
He was convinced someone pulled his traps, took the lobsters out, and replaced the zip tie that he uses to 'lock' the traps.
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"What else are they doing down there"
I've got to see if I can get my hands on a copy of the video they had from another experiment.
They stuck a video camera on the back of a good sized lobster and stuck him back in the water. They had video of this lobster walking around. He stops, his antenna start flicking around. Another [much smaller] lobster comes around a corner, stops in his tracks. Antenna fly for a second or two. Then the little one bolts has fast as he could out of there!
The lab was going to sink an old TV, and plant a lobster under the TV. Then take the big lobster and film him walking towards the other lobster and doing the whole antenna flicking thing. They were then going to superimpose the David Letterman show on the TV, and send it to Letterman as the "Lobster Cam".
I'm not sure if they ever ended up doing it though
