Man teaches dog to catch lobster from the ocean floor

Could a trick taught by a Florida man to his dog make life easier for Maine lobstermen?

On Wednesday, Alex Schulze posted a video online titled, “How to Train Your Dog to Catch a Lobster.”

Schulze is a co-founder of Devoted to the Ocean, an online retailer that donates a portion of its profits to ocean conservation. In the video, he gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to train a dog to catch live lobsters right off the ocean floor.

The video, posted to the Devotion to the Ocean Youtube page, is nearly eight minutes long, but you can see Schulze’s black Labrador, Lila, dive down and grab a lobster in the first few seconds:

Under the Youtube post, Schulze explains how he got the idea to teach Lila the trick:

“One day while out free diving, I had the idea of trying to get Lila to catch a live lobster. Sure enough she caught a lobster on her first try, and the rest was history.”

While lobstermen might find the idea amusing, realistically it would be much tougher to teach a dog to catch a Maine lobster than a lobster in Florida, which are known as “spiny” lobsters and have no claws.

Not only would the claws of the Maine lobster make the trick more difficult, but the murky Gulf of Maine waters make it impossible to see the ocean floor from any more than a few feet of depth.

So, it’s safe to say- cool as the idea may be- we shouldn’t expect to see the trick being performed in Maine any time soon.

Chris Shorr

About Chris Shorr

Chris is a sixth generation Portlander who loves all things Maine. He has worked with mentally ill and marginalized adults at a Portland non-profit, on a lobster boat in Casco Bay, at several high-end Portland restaurants, and at a local meat packing plant. He also ran for Portland City Council in 2013, wrote a weekly column in the now defunct Portland Daily Sun, and currently writes a weekly column in The Portland Phoenix.