March 1, 2006
Ray Fulks shows off “Ralph,” the giant lobster he retrieved from the waters off La Jolla. The crustacean was subsequently let go in the protected La Jolla Underwater Park.
As a free diver and spearfisherman, Ray Fulks has seen some incredible creatures underwater, but none prepared him for his eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with “Ralph.”
“Ralph” is the nickname Fulks' diving partner David Frapwell bestowed on a 12-pound lobster that Fulks wrestled out of a cave in about 10 feet of water Friday while free diving off La Jolla. Most lobster tales end with the crustacean going headfirst into a pot of boiling water. But that's not the case here.
“On one of my dives, I found a hole, poked my head in and couldn't believe how big this lobster was,” Fulks said. “I never dreamed I'd ever see a lobster that big.”
Fulks went to the surface, as much to get a breath as to collect his wits. He wondered if he could get his shoulders in the small cave that served as the lobster's lair. He took a big breath and went back down.
“I reached in and grabbed him by the antennae around the thick part at the base, and he didn't move,” Fulks said. “He was just big and slow, but he held onto the cave's sides really tight. I had to pull really hard to get him out. When I got him out, he looked like the biggest thing I'd ever seen. I put him under my arm and expected him to kick the heck out of me as I surfaced, but he never did.”
“David saw me swimming with it, and he couldn't figure out what I had under my arm. When I got it to the beach and we looked at it, I said, 'This could be someone's pet. We could put a collar and a leash on it and take it for a walk.' ”
They took it home, snapped some pictures and took some measurements. The carapace was 7 inches long (more than twice the length of a legal lobster's required 3¼ inches from eye socket to the edge of the carapace), and the lobster measured 20 inches from eyes to tail. It takes spiny lobsters five to seven years just to reach legal size of 1 to 1½ pounds, so a lobster 12 pounds likely is 20 years old or more. Fulks figures Ralph is at least 40. Spiny lobsters can live to be 50, and the biggest ever recorded went 26 pounds and was 3 feet long.
“The more we looked at him the more we realized there was no way we could kill him,” Fulks said. “In the course of his long life – what, 30 to 40 years? – to grow to that size he must have dodged all kinds of divers grabbing after him, hundreds of lobster traps.”
Knowing how unique Ralph was, the men called one of Frapwell's commercial fishing buddies for advice.
“He told us they usually let their bigger lobsters like this go, so we decided to do the same thing,” Fulks said. “We agreed on it almost simultaneously. It just didn't feel right keeping it. I had two legal bugs in addition to Ralph, so I really didn't need to keep an old lobster like this.”
Ralph was spared the pot of boiling water and melted butter and instead was taken to La Jolla Cove for a planned release. Valerie Grischy, president of the La Jolla Cove Swim Club, fetched a scale and Ralph weighed in at 12 pounds.
Lifeguard Casey Owens agreed to paddle the big fella out into the protected San Diego La Jolla Underwater Park Ecological Reserve. It's a “look, but don't touch” area that divers frequent.
Owens, who called Fulks “the real hero in this,” said Ralph was calm on Owens' paddleboard as Owens paddled out around the rocks that guard La Jolla Cove. But at one point the big bug started squirming.
“It was like he could sense he was back on the water, and he wanted to get right in again,” Owens said.
Owens thought Ralph actually might be Ralphette, because female lobsters have bigger tails so they can protect eggs. But Fulks believes the big lobster was a male.
“Definitely a male,” Fulks said. “Males mate with many females every mating season. Females generally seek out large, dominant males for mating. If you believe in natural selection, a lobster that was smart enough to remain free for that many years will definitely produce some pretty superior offspring.”
One other thing: If Ralph knew it was his time to get nabbed by a diver, he couldn't have claw-picked a more conservation-minded, compassionate free diver than Fulks to surrender to.
Live, crawl and prosper, Ralph.
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