Maine restaurant gets lobsters high before cooking them

[bluedigger]

Lobster meat is delicious, but as we’ve discussed, getting a live lobster from tank to plate isn’t one of our favorite activities. It’s hard not to feel bad for the spiny crustaceans, which is what motivated Maine restaurant owner Charlotte Gill to employ an unorthodox, “humane” method at her eatery: she says the kitchen gets the lobsters stoned before killing them.

I’m no carcinologist, but I have some questions about the scientific details of such a practice. The Mount Desert Islander reports Gill pumps marijuana smoke into a shallow tank via an air mattress pump, which she says she is able to do legally because she has a medical marijuana provider’s license. Gill claims the lobsters are then in a more sedated state; one test lobster, Roscoe, was supposedly more calm and docile in the weeks after his um, smoke session. (While the restaurant, Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound, is touting this method as compassionate, I can’t imagine swimming along in my tank like any other day, and then suddenly being transported to another tank where I start to feel high as a kite for the first time in my life. Sounds terrifying, honestly.)

Anyway, the restaurant has for a few months been offering guests the option to have their lobster prepared normally or sedated with marijuana before cooking. Gill says there are no residual THC effects in the meat itself because the lobsters are prepared by heating them above 420 degrees for an extended period of time; she says THC breaks down completely at 392 degrees. Again, I’m no biologist, but don’t substances in water concentrate in crustaceans? Just posing the question. The restaurant, for its part, swears the lobster meat is better-tasting if it’s been sedated before cooking.

I’m trying hard to reserve judgment about this, given I’ve never tried a “sedated” lobster nor taken a crustacean-focused science class. But as a person who loves words, I do have the authority to say it’s a crying shame they didn’t try this first with stone(d) crabs.
https://thetakeout.com/maine-restaurant-lobsters-high-stoned-cooking-1829137444

[SimpleC]

1. Why not...

[SWBTATTReg]

2. I thought lobsters breath via gills of some kind, in the water that ...

they are found. So it doesn't make sense to me that blowing smoke would make the lobsters high. Or perhaps I'm wrong and that they breath both in and out of water?

By the way, I liked your stoned crab remark. Ha.

[bluedigger]

4. There's all kinds of wrong with this idea.

But I'm no marine biologist. Or the writer. But the stoned crab was a good finish.

[skylucy]

3. ...hee hee hee

They need to play some Pink Floyd too.

[Pimienta]

5. Lobsters

love to get stoned. I'm an old lady now, but my elderly aunt always had them swimming in a tub of white wine
to "relax". She said the meat was much more tender. I don't really know about marijuana, but what could it hurt?