Cynthia Graber

speaker

308 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 9 Jun

Cynthia Graber’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Gastropod · What the Shell? Cracking the Lobster's Mysteries · 9 Jun 2026 podcast

So crab populations exploded and lobsters shrunk.

But the American lobster, it may be vulnerable, but it is a fighter.

So yeah, that's the American lobster.

That is its actual scientific name, and it is a thoroughly charming lobster by the sound of things.

Its other distinguishing feature is that it is abundant.

There are just a lot of American lobsters.

And the reason we're blessed with so many of these huge obstreperous bugs has to do with the fact that lobsters, with their delicious tails, need a lot of nooks and crannies to hide from predators.

And not to sound like a lobster.

Realtor here, but that is exactly what the Gulf of Maine offers thanks to some Ice Age glaciers.

The glaciers pushed across the continent and gathered lots of rocks as they carved up the land, and then they ended up in the Gulf of Maine and dropped all those rocks in the water.

So the Gulf of Maine really is the perfect place for a vulnerable bully like the American lobster to hide.

Rick Wally is one of the world's top American lobster scientists.

He's a professor at the University of Maine and is also director of the university's lobster institute.

He says the Gulf has another lobster friendly amenity.

Rick says that lobsters don't like the water too hot.

And the Gulf of Maine is the happy space in between them.

It almost seems like it was designed as a lobster paradise.

But lobsters haven't always flourished there.

Probably because back in the day, the Gulf of Maine was also full of cod, which ate all the lobsters.

There aren't many lobster shells in Native American middens, which are basically like the waste piles near settlements where you do find a lot of oyster shells.

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