The lobster is a solitary animal. They roam the sea floor looking for food and possibly a fight. When two lobsters meet, there is always a challenge for territory and some fights that occur are "to the death." The only time two lobsters may inhabit the same burrow is during a brief mating encounter. Once a female has molted and her shell is still soft, she may allow a male to tickle her shell (or fancy) with his antennae. If she is receptive, the male lobster enters the burrow. While raising on his tail and claws, the male uses his legs to flip the female over. The male lobster has a pair of hardened swimmeretts, or fins that he will use to pass a gelatinous blob of sperm to the female. The female has a recepticle on her shell located along her swimmeretts which will be used to store the sperm until fertilization. The female can store the sperm for several months until the egg-laying season in July and August. When a female produces fertilized eggs she fans them away to disperse with the current. These planktonic larvae float along the surface for 4 to 6 weeks. After molting five times, they are about an inch long. At this time they swim to the bottom to start their sedentary lives.
The female lays about 50,000 eggs during a mating season, but only 2 will generally survive to a legal catch size for lobstering. It takes 5 to 7 years for a lobster to grow to be one pound.
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