Not for the Pot: How 'V' Lobsters Can Help Save Them

Ned Bailey has spent the better part of four decades fishing off the south coast of Cornwall. Today, in his yellow raincoats and accompanied by his wind-disheveled Collie Spaniel, the 58-year-old cruises around the Falmouth Estuary, hauling up a series of rust-blackened lobster traps.

He throws wandering crabs, several starfish, and a wriggling conger eel. From time to time, he takes out a lobster: if the shell is more than 90 mm long, he keeps it; otherwise, it is thrown back into the sea, in accordance with the regulations.

But today, a lobster, the underside of its tail bursting with clusters of black eggs ink, is kept away. This is an egg hen, a pregnant female, laying approximately 20,000 eggs.

Bailey cuts a small "V" in his speckled royal blue and yellow tail before gently returning the lobster to the water. Now she's marked illegal for others to land - and hopefully her breeding potential is secure for a few more years.

The V-notch is a preservation method used to help replenish lobster stocks. Depending on who you ask, this is either a helpful way to safeguard the lobsters' future or a "bit of a nightmare". Some trace the origins of the practice to the Orkney Islands, others to the Gulf of Maine on the east coast of the United States (where it has been used since 1917), but since 2000 the law has prohibited the landing of notched lobsters in V and crayfish in Britain.

For Bailey, the technique is a means of self-control, or "compensation", for the catch he takes from the sea. "I want there to be a...