Origins of Taffe Lab Crustacean Work
In early autumn of 2018, the news broke about a Maine restaurateur who was exposing lobsters to cannabis smoke. NPR did a piece as did HuffPo, Boston.com, CBS News, and numerous other outlets. The coverage was minimal on detail but there seemed to be testable claims being made. First, that exposing lobsters to cannabis smoke would transfer some amount of the psychoactive constituents of cannabis to the lobster. This was far from obvious, given that this is a gill breathing species. It can survive for many hours out of water, but it gets oxygen by keeping its gills wet. Second, there appeared to be the claim that this procedure would result in some sort of behaviorally relevant dose which, again, was not obvious. Just because vertebrates have endogenous cannabinoid components of their nervous systems does not mean that crustaceans, or this American lobster, has anything that is sensitive to any constituent of cannabis. Third, there appeared to be a claim from the restaurateur that this would decrease the anxiety of the lobster. Indirectly, this also potentially related to more general concerns that the cooking procedure for lobster (live immersion in boiling water or steam) was unduly painful. Cannabis, as we know, is analgesic in vertebrate animals. Finally, the triggering event for this news cycle appeared to be the Maine Department of Health being concerned about the restaurant dosing customers with cannabis via the lobster. So the restaurateur was quoted as saying the cooking procedure would de-nature any THC in the lobster.
“THC breaks down completely by 392 degrees, therefore we will use both steam as well as a heat process that will expose the meat to a 420 degree extended temperature, in order to ensure there is no possibility of carryover effect,” she said.
A followup article in Down East magazine by Will Grunewald provided more detail on the methods.
Our pre-print on the effects of vaporized THC in the lobster was posted May 25, 2021, leading to another flurry of popular media coverage including the Portland Press Herald, the Mount Desert Islander, New York Post, and a cold-open on The Late Show with Steven Colbert.
Decapod Crustacean Publications
Gutierrez, A., Creehan, K.M., de Guglielmo, G., Roberts, A.J., and Taffe, M.A. Behavioral effects of ethanol in the Red Swamp Crayfish (Procambarus clarkii). JEAB, 2022, in press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jeab.746
Gutierrez, A., Creehan, K.M., Turner, M., Tran, R.N., Kerr, T.M., Nguyen, J.D., and Taffe, M.A. Vapor exposure to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) slows locomotion of the Maine Lobster (Homarus americanus), 2021, Pharmacol Biochem Behav, August, 207:173222. doi: 10.1016/j.pbb.2021.173222. [Publisher Site][PubMed]
This research was partially funded by seed money for animals, and equipment donation from La Jolla Alcohol Research, Inc., some NIH funding for staff and THC analysis (K99 DA047413; R01 DA035281; R01 DA035482 and R44 DA041967) and from startup funds from the University of California, San Diego.