23-pound lobster arrives in Island Park

“It’s lived for almost a century — we won’t sell it or eat it,” said Stephen Jordan, owner of Jordan’s Lobster Farms in Island Park. He held a 23-pound male lobster that was sent to him by one of his suppliers, John Price, who fishes the Bay of Fundy off the coasts of Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. “He didn’t tell us he was sending it, it just showed up,” Jordan added.

Although he sometimes gets restaurant orders for large lobsters, mostly between five and 10 pounds, Jordan said, the bulk of his business is lobsters between 1¼ and 2½ pounds. It takes about six to eight years for a lobster to reach one pound. In the wild, lobsters can live more than a century.

Other large lobsters have been pulled from the Bay of Fundy, which is known for extreme tidal changes and very cold waters. In 2011, a New Brunswick fisherman, Troy Mitchell, and his son pulled in a 22.3-pounder. Mitchell, 47, said the lobster, which he named Tiny, was the largest he has caught in his over 30 year career.

In 2008, in New Brunswick, a 22-pound lobster named Dee-Dee was saved from someone’s dinner plate by a $1,000 donation, even though a fish shop owner was offered $5,000 by a hungry group of people.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest lobster ever found was 44 pounds. It was about 65 years old, and was caught off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1977.

Jordan plans to donate the lobster to the Long Island Aquarium.