make big enough machines. At a former golf-shoe factory 13 miles from the Atlantic, workers at Shucks Maine Lobster drop up to 150 pounds of live lobsters into a perforated metal basket and sink them in the Avure 215L, a water-filled compression chamber affectionately known as the Big Mother Shucker. A pump pressurizes the water to 40,000 pounds per square inch—almost 2,700 times the pressure of the air around us, 60 times that of the deepest known lobster habitat, and more than twice the force at the bottom of the Pacific’s Mariana Trench.

At such extreme pressure, cellular activities cease, causing instant death, and the flesh disconnects from the exoskeleton. When the lobsters emerge six to eight minutes later, the succulent meat slips right out of the shell. The meat is then resubmerged in a bag, and the pressure is cranked up to 87,000 psi, destroying listeria and other food-borne bacteria. Because the force is uniform at all points, the flesh remains perfectly intact.

“Some folks from the FDA were up here last week,” Shucks owner John Hathaway says. “There was one woman who just wouldn’t smile at all. Then I had her shuck a lobster and she lit right up.” No one can resist the charm of the Big Mother Shucker.

Authors: Peter Andrey Smith

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