Lobster divers long for the eve of lobster season. Late in September in California, divers step off the beaches not long before midnight, looking forward to feasting upon their return. With a bag limit of 7 lobsters, a single dive can yield food for a banquet. Sadly, some of the prized tokens, proof of acute vision and speedy snatching, end up in freezers for a few months. The lobsters lose their wild existence to humans' hunger -- or competitiveness and greed.
The ocean's regenerative power is vast: despite the annual harvest, plenty of lobsters remain (although not as large or as plentiful in times past). Their persistence reminds us to give back more than we take, if we can. In other waters, commercial lobstering has made a dent in their abundance, sometimes to the detriment of other ocean life; in the northwest Hawaiian Islands, collapse of the lobster fishery has helped push the Hawaiian Monk Seal toward extinction. Meanwhile, divers in the less-developed countries risk the bends and death, diving without decompression tables or computers to furnish cheap lobster for chain restaurants.