Lobster fishing

[8] Slipper lobsters that prefer crevices, caves and reefs (including Scyllarides, Arctides and Parribacus species) are usually caught by SCUBA divers.

[6] Legal restrictions apply to the catching of lobsters in many parts of the world, in order to prevent overfishing and allow recruitment to the next generation.

Commercial fishing regulators in the United States, such as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service, enforce restrictions through the use of lobster fishing licenses and lobster pot tags that correspond to the fisher's permit number.

[10] About 122,000 t of lobsters are caught in the north Atlantic Ocean (FAO Fishing Areas 21 and 27),[1] where the dominant species are Homarus americanus and Nephrops norvegicus.

[5] Discards from Nephrops fishery may account for up to 37% of the energy requirements of certain marine scavengers, such as the hagfish Myxine glutinosa.

[13] The European lobster, Homarus gammarus is found across the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean from northern Norway to the Azores and Morocco.

Homarus gammarus is mostly fished using lobster pots, although lines baited with octopus or cuttlefish sometimes succeed in tempting them out, to allow them to be caught in a net or by hand.

[18] New Zealand implements the Quota Management System (QMS) to limit catches of fish and shellfish.

For J. edwardsii, the minimum legal size is 54 mm for males (no pincers on the rear legs and single pleopods) and 60 mm for females (pincers on the rear legs and paired pleopods), measuring the width of the tail over the primary splines on the second segment.

Best practices have been developed to prevent and reduce entanglement, and to facilitate getting fishermen who have fallen overboard back onto their vessels.