Hey Babies!

It’s that exciting time of year at the NLH as we reach peak hatching season! From April onwards we start to welcome thousands of tiny lobster babies on a daily basis usually around 4,000.  

If you have not seen a baby lobster before, the next few months are the busiest time in our lobster nursery and a great time to see our conservation work in action.

Lobsters start life as an egg attached to the underside of a hen (female) lobster, with about 20,000-40,000 lobster brothers and sisters. At the hatchery you will find the hen lobsters in our maternity ward, where they will look after their babies by constantly fanning water over their eggs to maintain oxygen supply and water quality.

Fun Fact: Hen lobsters carry their eggs for about 9 months, the same amount of time that a human carries a baby!

These tiny eggs then hatch into larvae, each smaller than a grain of rice! At the hatchery the baby lobsters are collected by our staff each morning (thank you lobster technicians!) and put into our larval cones where they swirl around like they would in the wild on the surface of the sea.

Fun Fact: In their quest for survival lobster babies will at times resort to cannibalism, sometimes feeding on their own siblings!

Our little lobsters will spend a couple of months at the hatchery, being nurtured through their most vulnerable stages by our dedicated team, until they are ready to be released into the ocean.

Fun Fact: In the wild only 1 in 20,000 lobster babies are expected to survive. By nurturing our lobster babies in our hatchery, we increase their chances of survival by approx. x1000!

Ready to witness the magic of lobster babies for yourself? Plan a visit to The National Lobster Hatchery this May Half Term. A great time of year to see all the little lobster loves, plus games and activities focused on our favourite marine animal babies. Cute!