It’s hard to keep a good lobster tale down: Nine-pound lobster claw photo resurfaces after two years

They clambered for a snap of the nine-pound lobster claw.

Sherman d’Entremont, 69, expected this when he showed up at the busy Middle West Pubnico wharf with it, packed in a box in his pickup truck. Dennis Point Wharf happens to be the largest commercial fishing port in Canada, the retired fisherman pointed out.

He was happy to show it off, and lots of people took pictures of him holding the giant, severed limb of the lobster.

That was more than two years ago. Wednesday morning, he found out that one of those shots just landed on Facebook. It was making the rounds. By afternoon, the photo had been shared more than 1,400 times.

D’Entremont, who lives in Lower West Pubnico, was pleased to see the photo getting so much attention. But not surprised.

“Not at all, because every fisherman that sees it, says ‘Wow what a lobster claw,’” d’Entremont said.

“So, if you have a fisherman who’s been fishing all his life and their first reaction is ‘What a lobster claw,’ it definitely is a decent size.”

He did, however, take exception to a couple of comments claiming the claw to be a fake. The Facebook post also didn’t accurately describe the context of the photo. It said the limb had washed up on the shores of Pubnico. Not true.

D’Entremont said he was gifted the claw by a fisherman friend about 10 years ago. His friend, while dragging for silver hake, found the lobster and its separated limb caught in the net’s grate — a sorting device used to separate fish you want to catch from those you don’t.

He said the clawless lobster was returned to the ocean. Given lobsters can regrow their limbs, the giant crustacean, whose age can be counted in dozens of years, may still be alive.

Regardless, d’Entremont was glad to be the beneficiary of the oversized appendage — the claw alone is 35.6 centimetres long. He was quick to preserve it.

To retain its colour, he kept the claw sealed in a barrel for a year, away from any light. He then covered it with a layer of varnish.

Truth be told, he’s seen larger lobsters in his day. Before calling it quits, he’d fished lobster and groundfish for nearly three decades. It’s not all that unusual to find them tangled in dragger nets, he said.

Plus, the photo is a bit of an optical illusion. The limb looks a little larger than it actually is.

Still, “nine pounds for one claw is a very large claw.”