A Bit More Detail

• The Prince Edward Island National Park, unsurprisingly, was devastated by Hurricane Dorian. Global News reports.


• The Mi'kmaq community of Lennox Island lost large amounts of frozen lobster after Hurricane Dorian. CBC PEI reports.


• Peter Rukavina has mapped the busiest and sleeping roads on PEI, here.


• Growth in ridership on Trius Transit in Charlottetown continues to outpace expectations, CBC PEI reports.


• The work that the Charlottetown suburb of Cornwall is doing, diverting the Trans-Canada Highway to build a Main Street, is authentically exciting urbanism. CBC PEI reports.

• News that lobsters experience pain when lowered into boiling water will have implications for the Island. CBC reports.


• The National Post reports on a Legion hall in Tignish that shamefully refused a Sikh man entry on account of his headdress.


• Happily, shipments of The Globe and Mail's Saturday edition to Prince Edward Island have resumed. CBC goes into detail.


• The Prince Edward Island government has contracted with three companies to grow three million grams of marijuana for local sale. CBC reports.


• The University of Prince Edward Island will be offering a two-year Master's program in tourism. CBC reports.

• Naomi Klein argues that this summer, of wildfires and disasters, marks an environmental turning point.


• National Geographic shares stunning video of defrosting Tibetan soil flowing.


• This dumping of illegally harvested lobsters as garbage on land in Nova Scotia is a terrible waste. CBC reports.


• Can we limit urban flooding only if we force landowners to contribute to the costs of stormwater infrastructure? MacLean's makes the case.

The lobster salad at Toronto’s Nota Bene has been on the menu since George Bush’s son was U.S. president (that is, 2008). So when the dish of steamed Nova Scotia lobster, maple-smoked bacon, preserved dill, avocado and buttermilk ranch dressing disappeared in early fall, regulars noticed.

Servers told querying patrons that the quality of lobster was not up to par. The harder truth was that the crustacean had gotten too rich for our blood. In the past five years, co-owner David Lee watched per-pound cost rise from around $9 to $12. Even if Nota Bene charged $29 for the appetizer, the dish would be unprofitable.

“The price is just crazy,” Lee says. “And there’s only so much the guest will pay for lobster.” When it reached $16 a pound in September, he took the salad off the menu.

People love to tell you, with the fanfare of revealing that Michael Caine’s real name is Maurice Micklewhite, that lobster was once so inexpensive and undesirable that it was fed to servants and prisoners.

However, this is not back in the day. And to anyone fewer than 100 years old and not living on the Atlantic, lobster is a delicacy.

North Atlantic lobsters (a.k.a. Homarus americanus, American lobster, Boston lobster or Canadian lobster), which are indigenous to our eastern shores, average one to one and a half pounds. Cooked, they contain between 20 per cent to 30 per cent meat. If the cost at the fishmonger is $15 a pound, that makes a pound of meat worth about $60.

With middle class incomes on the rise in China, the demand for Atlantic Canadian seafood products is rapidly increasing.

Atlantic Canada’s seafood companies are ready to position themselves in the Chinese market, with several representatives just returning from this year’s Seafood Expo Asia, which was held in Wanchai, Hong Kong, Sept. 6 to 8.

The Lobster Council of Canada led an Atlantic delegation of 14 companies to the expo, thanks to an investment of $124,133 from the Government of Canada through ACOA’s Business Development Program, and an additional $20,000 in support from the four Atlantic provinces.

“The Asian market has represented fantastic export growth for all sectors of the Canadian lobster industry with both live and processed Canadian lobster featured on menus and in retail/online platform sales throughout the region,” said Geoff Irvine of the Lobster Council of Canada.

A Buddhist-affiliated restaurant in Prince Edward Island has been vandalized, hours after a group of local monks liberated 600 pounds of live lobsters.

Charlottetown police responded early Sunday to property damage at the Splendid Essence restaurant, including a damaged railing, uprooted flowers and smashed mailbox.

The previous day, monks from the Great Enlightenment Buddhist Institute Society in Little Sands had invited a CBC News crew to join them on a fishing boat as they released lobsters purchased on the island into the ocean off Wood Islands.

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“Buddhist monks are motivated to practice compassion. All along they aspire to keep it low-profiled,” Venerable Dan, a monk at the institute, said in a statement. “They do not care for judging others, nor do they hope that any potential quarrel be triggered because of this.”

Geoffrey Yang, a spokesperson for the institute who had helped owner Keh-Jow Lu establish the vegetarian restaurant, did not want to speculate about whether the property damage was connected to the lobster release. He said Lu is a Buddhist follower, but is not directly associated with the monastery.

Sweden wants a blanket ban on the importation of live North American lobsters across the European Union in an effort to prevent a possible underwater invasion.

Gunvor Ericson, the Swedish secretary of state for the Ministry of the Environment, told CBC more than 30 American lobsters have been found in the west coast of Sweden over the last few years.

The fear is the new lobster could threaten the local species. Sweden is now asking the European Union to consider an import ban on live North American lobsters.

It's something those who work in the Swedish fishing industry are keeping a close eye on.

Anders Wall works at Carapax, a fishing supply store in Sweden. He's seen a number of North American lobsters. He says the concern is they reproduce faster.