Big DeDe the Lobster
While Big Dee-Dee the giant lobster is basking in fame, the family of fishermen who caught him has been toiling in anonymity, with good catches tempered by skyrocketing fuel prices and low prices. And while the century-old lobster is on the market for $1,000, the captain of the lobster boat The Wife And Kids earned $80 for the 22-pound, or 10-kilogram, lobster. “I never caught it for publicity,” Capt. Jerry Lord of Deer Island says. “I caught it to feed my family.” Lord, 36, fishes with his wife Angie and sometimes with his four-year-old son Kobe, and it was on a typical mid-June family fishing excursion that the lobster that came to be known as Big Dee-Dee was caught in the Bay of Fundy’s famed lobster fishing grounds. “We just hauled up and there it was,” Lord recalled yesterday. While initial reports suggested the lobster was attached to the outside of the trap and not in it, Lord can assure everyone the giant lobster did indeed somehow wiggle its way into the parlor of one of his traps, which is the section in which lobsters end up after they enter the trap and then try to get out. “Not only that,” Lord said, “but there was a 10-pounder (4.5 kilograms) underneath it.” The Bay of Fundy is famed for its large lobsters, but this was something else. Even Lord, who has been fishing lobsters for 14 years, had never seen such a specimen. “I thought maybe it would go 18 or 19 pounds (approximately eight to 8.5 kilograms.) I’ve caught them 15, maybe 16 pounds (6.8 to 7.2 kilograms,) but nothing that big.” Back at the docks, Lord alerted the lobster buyer that “I might have a big one in there,” and was surprised just how big it was when it was weighed. Not that it matters to him, but Lord thought Big Dee-Dee was destined to a biological station for examination. “Then someone pointed it out to me (in a newspaper) and said, ‘I think that’s your lobster.’” It was. Big Dee-Dee is now on display at Big Fish fish shop in Shediac, where visitors continued to show up to see him yesterday, his fame spreading like a wildfire thanks to local, national and international news coverage. Big Fish staff say they’ve received some inquiries and one serious offer to buy the lobster for the asking price of $1,000, but owner Denis Breau says the lobster is such an attraction that he won’t be sold for a few weeks yet. The lobster is so big that his dominant claw is bigger than a man’s size 10 boot, and his smaller claw is big enough to entirely cover a market-sized (large) lobster.