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- Ooh, look at that.
A spiny lobster is totally different from a Maine lobster.
It's something that we have around Bermuda.
It's a delicacy on the island.
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The season is from September to the end of April.
And everyone tries their best to get 'em.
It's crazy around here.
It's like one of the biggest things on the island.
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So we're on the way down to my little boat,
my little commercial boat, Troublemaker, it's her name.
And hopefully, we can go out there and catch a few lobsters.
We're licensed to catch lobsters.
Spiny lobsters, not the Maine lobsters,
not the lobsters up north, it's the southern lobsters.
Lobsters that, apparently, they taste better, so I was told.
The strange thing is, I'm a licensed fisherman
and I can't eat lobsters at all.
I'm allergic to all of it.
So I have to be very careful.
In the kitchen, on the boat, I gotta be careful.
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All the traps got flags on 'em.
That's how we can tell ours between someone else's.
We have bright pink and yellow.
We're pretty much right here.
The first lobster trap's coming up right now.
We're going to grip the flag now, then I'll pull it in.
Woo, look at that!
Lobsters, guys.
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Pretty good! (laughs)
Couple of big boys.
Couple of big girls.
A spiny lobster does not have claws, and it's just a tail.
The lobsters have to be measured 92 millimeters
before we can keep it.
If it's not 92 millimeters, we let it go.
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Gotta measure between his eyes and the back of his tail,
basically measuring his whole shell.
So when I go like that, see that?
His base is touching shell, that means it's legal.
If he was here, that means it's illegal.
I'd have to throw him overboard.
Yep, she's good to go on a plate.
And he's really good to go on a plate.
And let's try this one here.
This one might make, it might get ate.
Nope, short by a half meal.
So what I do is break the whip,
and she's going to drop her shell,
'cause she's shedding right now.
And so by the next time she drops, she might be legal.
We snap 'em so that we note,
we recognize that we caught it before.
So we give 'em a little snap.
The bait that we use is the leftover carcasses
from the fish that get filleted.
And any filleted fish, we freeze it and save it.
We start doing it in April, May, we start saving the wrecks.
And that way we can have enough wrecks
for the whole winter, six months of fishing.
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These are government-issued cages,
by Bermuda Fishery Department.
Every single fisherman out here has the exact same cage.
This is called sisal rope, it's a grass product.
After about six months, it starts rotting away.
If it gets lost, what will happen, the rope will rot away
and the door will completely come off.
And we have two hatches on the side
that my brother's showing you, escape hatches.
And so basically, that will rot away as well.
And our funnel's open all the time.
So it can't kill anything while it's lost.
Now the pot's been rebaited.
So we take it to another reef,
and pray that de lobsters are sitting in the caves,
sucking their thumb saying, "hey, I got free food,
let me get my breakfast and lunch."
Their last supper, unfortunately.
Yep.
Okay, yeah, gotta go.
Bermuda's surrounded by reefs, thousands
and thousands and thousands of reefs.
We actually look for a reef
that's gonna be suitable enough to fish.
You're looking for overhang
so the lobsters go underneath of it,
and that's where you try to find 'em.
You gotta have the experience, you know how to set traps.
Even though it's a sea cockroach,
they have a little brain, you gotta think like them.
You gotta be a cockroach yourself to catch cockroach.
And the next spot's coming up now.
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Got some lobsters, got five this time, five keepers.
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The one on my right is a male
and the one on my left is a female.
Difference is, a female's back legs are split.
A male's back legs are straight.
The female lobster on her back feet have split claws.
So basically, when she has her eggs attached to her tail,
she takes her back feet
and apparently scrapes the eggs off to let 'em go.
You'll see that these two lobsters are nearly the same size,
but her tail is a lot bigger than his.
See the difference in size?
You can see that?
His tail's always smaller
because she carries her eggs on her tail.
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Unfortunately, this one's got two lobsters.
One's been eaten, and the carp that ate him
did not get out of the cage.
This is a porgy, and he's a shell eater.
He eats crustaceans, only shells.
So basically, what he done was get in there
and had him for lunch.
It's actually cleaned pretty good.
- Good meal. - Had a great meal.
See his stomach?
All full, because it's got a fresh lobster in it.
It's mandated that we have to
pull the cages every seven days.
And we can only fish lobsters
during certain times of the year, from September to March,
because at the end of the months
that we can fish, they all reproduce.
So we go along and pull up a female lobster,
you can see a black spot on her belly,
and that means she's been fertilized.
If she's got eggs on her tail, we have to let her go.
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That's a big one!
Biggest one of the day, baby. (laughs)
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I've been trapping lobsters pretty much my whole life,
which is about 30 years.
So really, it's not my whole life.
I grew up fishing with my brother and my father
and everyone on the dock.
All the older guys, most of 'em are passed away right now.
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(speaks indistinctly)
'Cause we can put that right in the middle there.
Looks real good here too.
- All right. - Yeah?
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My brother was a mentor, I've learned a lot from him,
and we've been together our whole life,
and we're still together our whole life.
And that's probably why we're so good at what we do.
- I've been a full-time fisherman for 47 years, right?
And this is what I like.
I have the best office in the world,
the great outdoors, and can't beat it.
Even when it's rough, still can't beat it, yeah.
- Basically, he's the captain.
So he does the driving, he finds the fish.
And I pull up, make sure I got
the right proper gear, out to do it.
We both look to see
if we can find a proper place to put the trap.
Totally, totally different people.
- He does a lot of talking.
I just focus on what I've gotta do,
finding the fish or find the product.
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The imported price is $50 a lobster.
That's the ones coming from Florida.
But the local ones, guys are selling for $35-$45.
- The industry will catch about 18,000 lobster
in an in-shore season,
which starts from December 1, and goes until March 31st.
We usually catch in the area over 28 to 32,000 lobsters.
And then we gotta make sure we manage it
so there's lobster resources for the future.
- We don't have a grass called toto grass
or sea grass anymore.
So subsequently, when the baby lobsters
are coming from the Caribbean, they have no protection.
So the lionfish are eating 'em, all the fish are eating 'em.
What's going to happen in the next 20 years?
We don't know.
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This is the last one of the day.
Hopefully it comes out full, and we'll go home
with a big smile on our face, a bigger smile.
Fingers and toes crossed.
Oh, that's that.
You didn't cross your toes.
You're supposed to cross your toes.
Basically, we are done for the day.
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I take the bigger ones for here.
And then my brother who has a permit as well,
he takes the other half,
and he'll deliver to a few restaurants as well.
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- 33 there, yeah, it's all right, no complaints.
- Fresh lobsters, that's right.
Outta the sea, to the kitchen, to the plate, to the stomach.
Can't get no fresher than that.
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Here they go.
Lost In The Triangle was one of my dreams when I was younger
because I started fishing when I was probably 18, 19.
And subsequently, we used to catch so much fish,
and we couldn't sell it.
So I said, you know what?
I want to open up a restaurant.
My mother was an amazing cook,
and she taught me most of the stuff I know.
- I'm pretty much doing this every year.
We have limited season here.
It's only seven months a year.
So people are very excited to come
when the lobster season will start.
And they're very sad when it stops for five months.
I love it, especially when the fish comes.
You can see the fish jumping, and you feel very nice.
So these are all cleaned up.
We're going to season with garlic powder,
lemon pepper and paprika.
But lemon pepper is always good with the lobsters.
And garlic powder,
we cannot eat anything without garlic powder.
And now it'll go in the oven.
All set, here comes the magic.
For the baked lobsters,
we put stuffing on the head area.
It's all ready, now we'll put some lemon butter garlic sauce
and we'll put on the plate.
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Now we are doing the Thermidor.
So I'll take the meat first from the shell.
And we'll fry these shells for a minute,
just to give a little bit of color.
In the meantime, we'll cook the meat.
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So it is all done.
I'll take my shell out and I'll do the plating.
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- [Delvin] Fishing's basically in my blood.
I've been brought up doing it my whole life.
When you get out there, it's so peaceful.
You just got the breeze blowing through your hair.
You can look down and you see the bottom of the ocean.
That's how clear our water is at all.
So being out on the ocean is an experience
that it just makes you feel young, you know?
And it's just the soul, the freshness,
and the clean smell, it's amazing.
And then when you're out there,
when you're catching fish and the fish are biting,
you're so excited and and rejuvenated that it's like,
"Wow this is a beautiful life."
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