Feeding Frenzy

She came down from Cincinnati
It took her three days on a train
Lookin' for some peace and quiet
Hopes to see the sun again

Lives down by the ocean
Takin' care to look for sharks
They hang out down around the Waterfront way
And feed right after dark

Chorus:
Can't you feel 'em circlin', honey
Can't you feel 'em schoolin' around
Fins to the left, fins to the right
You're the only bait in town
Oh oh
Oh oh
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
You're the only bait in town
(Jimmy Buffet, Fins – From Feeding Frenzy, 1990)

There's a feeding frenzy in Florida, all right. The annual free-for-all where the spiny lobsters get to try their hand (so to speak) at offing a few scuba divers. They get several every year, despite having to sacrifice about 184,000 of themselves to do it. The Animal Uprising™ works with a slightly different understanding of calculus.

The mad dash got under way at the stroke of midnight, which marked the start of a two-day "mini-season" that gives recreational divers a chance to hunt for lobsters ahead of commercial fishermen.

Law enforcement officials were out in force, trying to ensure the estimated 184,000 lobsters killed in a typical mini-season are the only casualties.

Last year alone, five divers died and several more were injured during the two day lobstermania.

Heart attacks, lack of experience, foul weather, drunkenness, and what one official called "plain stupidity," have been blamed for past casualties.

There have been plenty of cases of boats colliding with divers, people running out of air deep in the deep, and lobster hunters surfacing far away from their rides back to shore..

The US Coast Guard had rescue jets, helicopters and boats on stand-by early Wednesday, and fully expected to use them.

"We're going to have a lot of missing divers," USCG officer Dana Warr said, speaking from experience.

Lobster-rage can also be a problem. Territorially minded divers have been known to threaten each other with harpoons, flares and even guns to protect their catch.

"One year we had a person shoot at someone who was on what he considered his own personal lobster spot," said Becky Harrin of the Monroe Sheriff's office.

Lobster rage? We keep lowering the standards, don't we? People are also known to try to go 'waaaaaay over the limit, not just in behavior, but in the number of lobsters taken, Some people have been "bright" enough to try to hide a freshly caught spiny lobster inside their wet suit. This is when they find out what the "spiny" means in the crustacean's name. D'oh.