Norway Lobster

Crabs, shrimps and shellfish

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Identity card

Norway lobster

Scientific name:: Nephrops norvegicus

Family:: Néphropidae

Class:: Malacostraca

Phylum:: Arthropoda

Year of description:: Linnaeus, 1758

IUCN Status:: Least Concern

CITES-status:: Not evaluated

Distribution:: Northeast and Central Eastern Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Seas

Habitat:: Between 20 and 800 metres, mainly on silty seabeds.

Size:: Adult size between 8 and 24cm.

Diet:: Feeds on shellfish, molluscs, worms and even detritus.

The Norway lobster is not a small lobster. It also goes by the Italian name of Scampi.

The Norway lobster is oviparous. Its eggs are incubated for 8-9 months. After hatching, new-borns remain in a planktonic state for one month.

Norway lobsters reach sexual maturity at around 4 years for males and 3 years for females.

The breeding season occurs in late spring in the Atlantic and during the winter in the Mediterranean.

Did you know?

Where is the animal to be found?

The Norway lobster is a sedentary crustacean that stays hidden in its burrow most of the time. However, it is an active nocturnal predator. It leaves its burrow at low light levels.

It lives at depths of between 20 and 800 metres, mainly on silty or sandy-silty seabeds where it digs its burrow (typically 200-600 metres).

How can it be recognised?

Males and females differ in the shape of the first pair of pleopods, the swimmerets that are rigid and transformed into a copulatory organ in males, and much thinner and more flexible in females, and in the location of the sexual orifices.

What is distinctive about it?

The Norway lobster can live alongside other organisms. The large-scaled goby or the Goneplax rhomboides (a small seabed crab) can be its neighbours. The Symbion pandora is an organism measuring a few tenths of a millimetre that remains attached to the shell of the Norway lobster.

Threat and protective measure

French catch regulations set the minimum size at 9 cm to guarantee product quality. European regulations for minimum size vary between 4 and 12 cm depending on the catch area.