Biggie Smalls, a 95-year-old, 14-pound lobster, rehomed from Orange Beach restaurant to New Hampshire science center

Posted 3/13/23

ORANGE BEACH — Newspapers can help people with archival research and weird problems, but Diane Bockin brought Gulf Coast Media a new, crustacean-centered one last week.

Her need: blank …

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Biggie Smalls, a 95-year-old, 14-pound lobster, rehomed from Orange Beach restaurant to New Hampshire science center

Posted

ORANGE BEACH — Newspapers can help people with archival research and weird problems, but Diane Bockin brought Gulf Coast Media a new, crustacean-centered one last week.

Her need: blank newsprint. Her reason: to help pack and ship a 14-pound, 95-year-old lobster with a TikTok following on a quest to get rehomed from an Orange Beach restaurant.

By the time Bockin stepped into GCM's Foley office, she and her granddaughter, Krystal Lawrence, had already arranged an aquatic shipping company to pick Biggie Smalls up from The Angry Crab Shack. They had already confirmed she (they don't scientifically know the lobster's sex, but she's a she on TikTok) would be given a 6-by-6-foot aquarium tank mimicking her natural habitat at Seacoast Science Center in Rye, New Hampshire. And they had already been feeding, cleaning and trying to save her for more than six months.

Biggie came to the restaurant, where Lawrence had been working for a few months, through their regular vendor. According to NOAA Fisheries, there is no official way to determine the exact age of a lobster, but scientists think based on research into body size and age that the maximum age they reach approaches 100 years. Aquarium studies suggest a 1-pound lobster is 5-7 years old.

After a few weeks, customers started to enjoy seeing her in the tank. No one bought her. Market price for lobster last week was $42 a pound. You do the math.

So, Lawrence started taking special care of her, feeding her, cleaning her.

"It became part of my daily tasks. I'd come in and get everything ready and check on her, make sure she was OK," Lawrence said. "I'd put menus up on the tank to block the sun because they don't like sun. She'd get agitated and turn her back to us and face the back of the tank."

As Lawrence grew fond of Biggie, so did the rest of the kitchen staff. And so did Bockin.

"I asked the general manager if I could buy him and keep him there while we figured out a place that would take him," Bockin said. "He talked to the owner, and he said yes."

It turned out that was just the first step. Bockin made phone calls. She looked online. She wrote letters.

"You can't imagine how many phone calls, how many emails something like this takes," Bockin said.

One day, Lawrence decided to make Biggie a TikTok to spread the word and ask for help in finding her forever home. Within 30 minutes, someone suggested ShipYourAquatics.com.

It turned out that was not the last step.

They found Seacoast Science Center in New Hampshire and learned they had recently lost their big lobster, which they used for educational purposes with children. The almost last step was to talk to them a dozen times and research everything they could on how to pack a live animal for shipping.

Biggie would be shipped through FedEx in a Styrofoam cooler, similar to how lobsters are delivered to restaurants by vendors. NOAA Fisheries says they can live several days out of water if kept in a cool, moist environment. Lobsters have gills, and moisture is essential to their survival. Fresh water is lethal. They require salty seawater.

"Seaweed is ideal (to pack them with)," Bockin said, "and a friend said a bunch had washed up, but by the time we got out there it had all washed back into the Gulf."

That's when she asked GCM for blank newsprint.

The day of Biggie's move, Krystal picked her up and out of the tank by her claws. Never hold a lobster by the stomach, she said. That part of the shell is soft and will crush easily. She sat her in the cooler inside a shipping box, where she had placed layers and layers of wet, brown restaurant paper towels over a layer of ice packs, careful to not let the ice packs touch Biggie directly. More paper towels wetted with water from her tank and some brown paper table covers, and she was ready for her big trip.

After a drive to Pensacola and a flight to New Hampshire, the science center notified Bockin and Lawrence the next morning Biggie made it safe and sound.

They and the staff at The Angry Crab Shack were sad to say goodbye (maybe except the hosts who inevitably had to explain the massive crustacean to everyone who walked in the door for six months), but they all voiced they were glad she will live in a tank more fit for her stature.

"Crazy I fell in love with a lobster," Lawrence commented on GCM's video sharing the story on TikTok. "So happy she is somewhere she will be happy."