A taste of extinction.

• Author: Dudley, Steven

I'm reminded of just how tasty extinction can be on my last night in Puerto Cabezas, a gritty port town in the northwestern region of Nicaragua. I order langosta a la plancha in a seaside restaurant where a stiff breeze blows from the ocean and local pop music thumps from an adjacent disco. The waitress brings out my food: three grilled lobster tails, smothered in butter. I jab my fork into one of the tails and out pops a perfect slab of meat--stiff, yet moist. The strings of lobster slide down my throat, aided by a local beer named Victoria.

These tails are small; I wonder whether they are too small. The minimum legal length for a lobster tail in Nicaragua and the United States is five-and-a-half inches of five ounces. If the lobster is below that size, it means that the creature hasn't had the chance to reproduce. Eating the lobsters before they procreate can lead to the end of the species. When times are good, there's no need for fishermen to sell undersized lobster. But in recent years, times have not been so good. The miniature, apparently undersized lobster on my plate causes me to hesitate. I consider taking a shell home, measuring it to find out whether I am doing my part to destroy this species. But I decide I don't want to know. Besides, the meat is too good.

Nicaragua is but one link in a chain of destruction of sea life that is becoming all too common across the globe. In April, the U.S. government released its first serious study of the oceans in thirty years. The report detailed the steady destruction of water quality and sea life due to increasing pollution and overfishing. The U.S. Commission on Oceans' historic declaration came just months after a study by Canadian scientists, which was published in Nature magazine last year. The article said that 90 percent of the world's large ocean species, including cod and tuna, had disappeared in the last fifty years.

Panulirus argus, or spiny tail lobster, as it's known, isn't exactly in the same trouble as these other species. But many in the lobster business are worried. In Florida, authorities instituted a six-month closed season on lobsters due to fears of overfishing. After stocks dropped as much as 40 percent in the last three years off its coast, the Nicaraguan government created a three-month closed season that will be extended to four months next year. "If they continue like this, in five years there won't be any more lobster in Nicaragua," says Miguel Moranco, the head of the Nicaraguan fisheries department. "It's like caviar," says one Miami-based lobster importer/exporter who wanted to be identified simply as Carlos. "Today, we ship it out by the box. Tomorrow, we'll be shipping it out by the can."

Still, neither Carlos nor any other lobster importer/exporter has slowed down his business. It's too good. Spiny tail lobster fetches close to $15 per pound on the open market--$16.15 this spring at Fulton...