As soon as your order arrives, please open the box and check the product.

Lobster
If you ordered live lobster, check it for liveliness. If the lobster is moving around, then it is OK. If the lobster is weak, for example, if it has a droopy tail or claws, then it should be cooked right away. If the lobster is not moving at all and if there is an ammonia smell present, then the lobster has died during transit and should not be eaten.

Cover them with a damp newspaper to keep the gills moist and allow them to breathe.

Live lobsters are very perishable, and require a controlled salt water environment to remain alive.  They do not generally live much more than a day out of water, so ideally, you should cook your lobsters on the day you receive them.  (Cooked lobsters will stay fresh for at least three days in the refrigerator.)

Never place lobsters in tap water to try to keep them alive; lobsters are salt water creatures, and fresh will kill them.

The best way to keep lobsters alive at home is to refrigerate them; cover your lobsters with moist seaweed or a damp cloth (which you probably received with the lobsters when they were delivered), and leave them in the refrigerator until ready to cook.

Please note, if couriers (FedEx, Purolator, Air Canada, etc) cause a delay due to not shipping the product to its destination on time, whether it be a partial delivery, late delivery, damaged box of product, if your delivery misses your event or if it can only be delivered after 48 hours of being sent (which will most likely be fatal for the live lobsters and they will spoil), we cannot issue reimbursements or refunds on product that the courier is responsible for spoiling. If any rare cases like this arise the best we can do is to submit a claim for reimbursement on your behalf. Most times these claims are not successful because couriers usually have waiver clauses in their service agreements where they are not responsible for the spoiling of perishable items. This rare but real risk cannot be absorbed by us as the lobster supplier. This disclaimer is also to make you as the customer aware that there is always a risk having live lobster delivered.

Interac e-Transfer (formerly Interac Email Money Transfer) is a funds transfer service between personal and business accounts at participating Canadian banks and other financial institutions. The service is provided by Acxsys Corporation.

Participating institutions

Most Canadians who use online banking can send funds. These include personal deposit account holders with the big five banks, Desjardins, Tangerine, National Bank, President’s Choice Financial, and many credit unions and other institutions, as well as some small-business account holders. In 2015, 105 million money transfer were sent using the platform totalling over CA$44 billion in value.

Any personal account holder in Canada can receive funds.

Benefits and disadvantages

Unlike a cheque, the funds from an e-Transfer are not frozen in the recipient’s account. An e-Transfer cannot bounce, as the funds are guaranteed, having been debited from the sender’s account immediately upon initiating the transfer. As long as both sender and recipient bank at participating institutions, the funds are sent and received instantly. However in some cases, for example two people with different banking institutions, transfers may take anywhere between near instant, or up to a few hours for the receiving party to get their emailed notice.

However, like any online banking mode of payment, e-Transfers are vulnerable to phishing. Many Canadians in areas where the Big Five banks have little presence or who do not bank online are penalized by a surcharge when receiving e-Transfers. Unlike a real giro, an e-Transfer requires intervention from the recipient for every single transaction. An e-Transfer goes stale much faster than a cheque (after 30 days, the e-Transfer is automatically cancelled and the sender is notified by e-mail to retrieve the funds.)

We don’t know the maximum age of lobsters. However, they can live for more than 50 years.

If  purchased whole lobsters which have already been cooked (and several lobster delivery services offer lobsters boiled in sea water to lock in the “fresh taste of Maine”) you can keep them refrigerated for up to three days.  When you are ready to serve them, place them in a pot of rapidly boiling water. When the water returns to a boil, start timing. In just five minutes, your lobsters will be ready to enjoy.

Lobsters grow by molting, or by shedding their shells each year.  Just after they molt, they are soft and fragile until their new shell has hardened, and they are known as new shell or soft shell lobsters, sometimes called “shedders.”  After their new shell hardens, they are known as hard shell lobsters.

Soft shell are tender, sweet, and delicious, and represent about 90% of the catch during the summer months.  They are prized by Nova Scotia natives, and are less expensive than hard-shell lobsters as well, but they contain less meat than a hard shell lobster of the same size, because their body has not yet grown into its new shell, and so the lobster’s shell is larger than its body.

Soft shell (or new shell) shell lobsters do not travel well, and should not be purhcased for live delivery; most reputable companies will not even  try to ship live soft shell lobsters because they are unlikely to survive the journey.  Some companies do, however, offer precooked whole soft shell lobsters.

An adult female lobster will produce approximately 10,000 eggs when she is fertile. Each egg is the size of the head of a pin. As they grow, the eggs are held under the mothers tail with a special glue-like substance. The female will carry her eggs for almost a year. Then the eggs are released as larvae. It has been estimated that less than 1% of the eggs will survive to grow into an adult.

Lobsters grow by molting, or shedding their shells. Just after they molt, they are soft and fragile until their new shell has hardened. During this time, the lobster buries itself in the mud to hide from its natural enemies. When they are young, an immature lobster will molt several times each year. It takes approximately seven years for a lobster to grow to legal harvesting size (1-1 1/4 lb.). At this age, they molt just once a year, usually during the summer months. Each molt will increase their size by 1/4 lb. on average. When lobsters get older, they will often skip years, and molt less frequently.

Live lobsters are usually dark green or greenish-brown, but lobsters can be found in a range of colors including blue, white, orange, yellow, black, and sometimes even red.  “Calico” lobsters are multicolored, and some lobsters even have two distinct colors, separated by a line down their backs.  But whatever color they are when alive, all lobsters turn bright red when cooked.

When a lobster is cooked, protein molecules in its shell bend into new shapes which reflect only the red wavelengths in light.

The “green stuff” that can be found in cooked lobster is tomalley, which serves as the pancreas and liver.  Some consider it a delicacy.  We have an article dedicated to lobster tomalley.

To pick up a lobster, grab it by the back, just above where the tail connects to the carapace (body). The lobster won’t be able to bend his claws back enough to get you. Be careful not to let your fingers get below the tail; the shell on the underside of the tail has some sharp edges, and may cut you if the lobster flips it’s tail as if it was swimming.  (Lobsters swim backwards by flipping that powerful tail; you may have heard the old expression “crabs crawl sideways and lobsters swim back.”)

It is difficult to establish the exact age of a lobster. The rate at which it grows depends on water temperature. The warmer the water is, the quicker it grows. In the Magdalen Islands, lobsters reach their commercial size at about 8 years of age.