another specimen

Homarus americanus
American lobster
This specimen is impressive, but it’s certainly not the biggest in a Canadian museum. The Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews, New Brunswick may hold the contender for that award!

A lobster’s big claws are each specialized for a task, one for cutting and one for crushing. As it eats, lots of bits and pieces float in the water around the lobster’s head, offering a food source to the barnacles you can see hitchhiking on the surface of the claws. These are crustaceans, too, although they haven’t looked much like them since they settled here as tiny free-swimming larvae and traded their planktonic life for this permanent home next to the grocery store!

Planning!

I took a walk down to the collections pod today to see what specimens where being worked on for the gallery. When I entered the pod I got an extra special treat. Judith Price, the Assistant Collections Manager for the invertebrate collection, and Nicole Dupuis, the exhibition content developer for the water gallery, had laid out some of the specimens that will be placed on display around the blue whale in the final gallery. This is a part of the design process of figuring out what specimens best tell the story of the gallery and how they all fit together in the physical space available. It takes a lot of playing around to get everything right. Here’s a sneak peek at what we are likely to see in the final gallery.

C.Iburg

C.Iburg

C.Iburg