Berried females, aka egg-bearing females. Have you seen one? Not unless you’ve been aboard a lobster fishing boat. It is illegal to keep a berried female.
Unlike the roe, or red eggs inside a cooked lobster, these black eggs glued to the outside of the tail are fertilized. After 9 to 12 months of carrying them on the swimmerets (or pleopods) of the tail, the eggs will hatch into tiny lobster larvae that float on the surface of the ocean for 6 to 8 weeks.
Lobster harvesters in Eastern Cape Breton are involved in multiple research projects studying those egg-bearing females and the released larvae. Stay tuned for more on those projects soon.