中国大餐 -- 龙虾之年？

choi

特写：中国大餐 -- 龙虾之年？ BBC Chinese, Feb 23, 2015
www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/chin ... china_lobster_maine

, which is translated from

Kyle McAuley and TJ Raphael, Chinese Feast: Year of the Lobster?  PRI’s The World, BBC, Feb 22, 2015
www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31541092

Note:
(a) PRI = Public Radio International
(b) “Stephanie Nadeau, owner of The Lobster Company wholesaler in Kennebunkport, Maine, says in 2009 China bought virtually no lobster from Maine. Now the Chinese New Year is the busiest time of year - even busier than Christmas.
'With Christmas, it's only one day,' Nadeau says. By contrast, she says she'll spend four weeks this year filling her Chinese New Year orders.”

This is the same Stephanie Nadeau portrayed in
Patrick Whittle, American Lobster: The New Chinese New Year Delicacy. Associated Press, Jan 17, 2015.

(c) "The majority of Maine lobster exports still go to Canada, but even with record catches, wholesalers say they hadn't anticipated this much demand from a country so geographically distant - a major concern when shipping live seafood. * * * "There's been [a lot] of difficulty this year because of all the bad weather we've had in Boston and New York," adds Nadeau. 'This time of the year, because the water's so cold, we harvest very few lobsters - they pretty much hibernate in the winter. All the lobsters that we're shipping now were caught mostly in December and early January.'"

BBC translation: 缅因州绝大多数的龙虾仍然出口到加拿大，不过缅因州的龙虾批发商们说，他们完全没有想到那么遥远的中国会对缅因州的龙虾有如此大的需求。 * * * 由于美国今年冬天天气寒冷，在波士顿和纽约地区龙虾的收成不好。结果运到中国的龙虾绝大多数是在2014年12月和今年元月捕捞到的。

(i) Reading the English original, One may get the impression this year notches "record catches." But that is not the case. The latest statistics available is that of 2013 (from Maine government's website). And news.google.com has no piece about this year's catch. So the first sentence of the quote should be "even with record catches" (note the plural form of "catch," which hints various years of record catches).
(ii) "This time of the year" shows it is same every year, rather than this particular year, as the translation says ("今年冬天天气寒冷").
(iii) Do lobsters hibernate? If one googles, answers vary, but none show proof. The ruth is there is no scientific research (or observation or report) on this (I know, because I check ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, a clearinghouse).

(d) “Spiny lobsters used to abound in the South China Sea, but overfishing has destroyed their Chinese habitat and driven up prices. Even though they've logged more air miles, US lobsters are a bargain in China. * * * Maine lobster offer softer meat and a finer flavour than their spiny cousins”

"Spiny lobsters * * * are a family (Palinuridae) of about 60 species of achelate crustaceans."  Wikipedia
(i) The one in South China sea is Panulirus stimpsoni. Hawaii and California each has its own species of spiny lobster. Bruce Phillips and Jiro Kittaka, Spiny Lobsters: Fisheries and Culture. 2nd ed. Fishing News Books (a division of Blackwell Science Ltd), 2000, at page 6.
books.google.com/books?id=t_3rCMXtggwC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=spiny+lobsters+"south+china+sea"&source=bl&ots=J_vN3DRcgE&sig=GBXeL0Q-mxq4Qztkt8Cb0phcKAg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=scHrVIXrF9CHgwTN9IGoBw&ved=0CGIQ6AEwDQ#v=onepage&q=spiny%20lobsters%20%22south%20china%20sea%22&f=false
(ii) Though I have never heard of it, Taiwan has a couple of species of spiny lobsters.
(A) Japanese spiny lobster  伊勢蝦／伊勢海老
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_spiny_lobster
(Panulirus japonicus)
(B) Chang Y-J et al, Reproductive Biology of the Spiny Lobster, Panulirus Penicillatus, in the Southeastern Coastal Waters off Taiwan. Marine Biology, 151: 553-564 (2007).
Users/Guest/Downloads/Lobster_with_Chilu_publication_2007.pdf