Raffle winner saves giant lobster
By Les Perreaux



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MONTREAL — Goliath the giant lobster was hours away from a scalding, steamy end at a Boston-area Super Bowl party when Marlene Casciano looked deep into his beady eyes.

Casciano bought a raffle ticket, won the 20-pound New England bar prize and set off a rescue mission that will land the large crustacean in a Montreal aquarium.

“I really wanted this after seeing the lobster, just the sheer size of him was incredible,” said Casciano, who says she normally eats lobster like “a good New Englander.”

“People were explaining to me that he would have to be really old to get to that size. It just seemed to me he deserved to live rather than end up in a boiling pot.”

Casciano was with friends at a bar called Steamers in Taunton, Mass., when she caught a glimpse of the lobster, likely aged somewhere between 30 and 50 years, with a crusher claw the size of her forearm.

“I was actually holding the tickets and started praying so we could rescue him,” said Casciano, who works at a Boston executive training firm.

“I was so excited.”

After winning the draw, she named the beast Goliath for his obvious girth as well as in honour of the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

As a diehard fan of the defeated New England Patriots, it seemed fitting to toss her own Giant into the ocean from a Cape Cod beach.

“The bar owner got such a kick out of me,” she said. “He started explaining, ‘No, you can’t just dump him on the beach, you need a boat, it would have to go deep in the ocean.’ It wasn’t as simple as I was thinking.”

Goliath went back into the bar’s lobster tank for the night, and the next day Casciano started calling wildlife experts, including the New England Aquarium in Boston.

It turned out the Montreal Biodome had just been in touch about acquiring a giant lobster, should one fall on the doorstep of the Boston aquarium.

Serge Pepin, the Biodome’s curator of animal collections, says he was looking for a large specimen for his aquarium’s 2.5-million-litre tank.

“Large lobsters are pretty rare and pretty impressive for the public,” Pepin said.

“American lobster is a key species of our collection plan for the St. Lawrence ecosystem. We have smaller specimens that are not so easily seen, so this specimen will be wonderful.”

The day after the Super Bowl, Casciano swaddled Goliath in towels soaking in salt water and ice packs, and bundled him into her car for the hour-long drive to the Boston aquarium.

The rubber band immobilizing his finger-snapping claw fell off.

“So there he was, alone in the car with me, with his crusher claw free,” she said. “It was a bit nerve-racking, but he didn’t move around at all.”

Goliath is doing well in a quarantine tank at the New England Aquarium, brandishing his claws at anyone who comes near. He is expected to move to Canada once paperwork is completed early next month. He will likely go on display a few weeks later.

“He’s very alert, and being very aggressive about defending his territory,” said aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse.

LaCasse said there is an important conservation element to Casciano’s good deed. Biologists and fishery authorities in Canada and the United States try to discourage feasting on large lobsters.

The reproduction rates of lobsters over five pounds are exponentially higher than those of the one-pound lobster more often found on plates.

In parts of Canada and Maine, which produces 80 per cent of the U.S. lobster supply, anything more than five pounds must be thrown back.

LaCasse says large lobsters make up a small market share, and are often desired more for the spectacle than the meat.

The big ones don’t even taste very good, Pepin adds.

“It’s not so good to eat, the flesh is tough, it’s really not so interesting.”


I am so there at the Biodome as soon as this bad boy shows up. What a great story. He is gonna so rock the St Lawrence tank. Snapping at the 6 foot Sturgeon and Arctic Char. A great excuse to go back soon.