Celebrating the Start of Lobster Season in Belize

I did my first two lobster fest events this past weekend and ate to my hearts content. In fact, I am still doing so. I just polished off a delicious piece of key lime pie for breakfast from the Saturday night party.

Opening night of Lobster Fest at El Divino is always fun and this year was no exception. I hung out with the Grand Caribe party posse. There are lots of Montana people in town – of course that led to many crazy stories and lots laughter all night long.

Since lobster season in Belize officially starts on June 15th, this years special menu was crab & fish cakes, Surf & Turf and key lime pie for dessert. As soon as the food showed up our table grew very quiet – everyone was busy salivating over their shrimp and steak. After dinner the party got lively and people started dancing, Banana Beach did a really good Rock and Roll song request list for DJ tracks, and he threw down a great music mix.

My Montana weatherman emailed Cowboy Doug and he emailed this morning to see how we were enjoying our annual lobster festival – the pictures below are a good indication of our satisfied souls – especially the food ones 🙂

In his email he also told us some harsh news, and I am sending my condolences to Great Falls Montana – they are about to get SNOW in June – UGH. 3KRTV Storm Tracker Weather blog reports heavy June snow on the way for some. It seems so crazy to me as we are nothing but heat here in San Pedro, as the weather in June should be.

Luckily for Brent, he is on the other side of the continental divide and doesn’t plan on being above 6500 feet. His plans do include another trip back to Belize to join the GC party posse for San Pedro Lobster Fest 2015. Brent was just recently here and has been visiting Belize for a long time as you will see from the post Belmopan and rebuilding Perdomo Rum Plant in the early 90?s. 

Onto the next event – the beach bar party at Caribbean Villas Hotel. It was a perfect day for a beach party, and lobster lovers came from all over the island to enjoy great live music, delicious food and a scenic view. There was lots to see with the San Pedro Sailing club in action doing races, a kite surfer out at the reef, and hobie cats coming in and out. Raul and Keith were doing live music and a few different girls joined into sing and one even went as far as twerking. I always like listening to Shirlee sing, she gets better and better every time.

The Grand Caribe crew all made it to the beach party too and we ended up hanging out again. After feasting on 2 different lobster dishes, I decided to get some hoop practice in, much more space than our living room 🙂

At the end of the event the rain hit hard and fast so everyone dashed under the spacious outdoor palapa area to stay dry and enjoy some more cocktails.

I could not decide between two options, but since lobster is good for you and high in vitamin B-12, I went with the lobster roll and the grilled lobster tails. Both were very yummy but the tails won, nothing like devouring big hunks of fresh caught lobster right out of the shell.

A bit about about the spiny lobster that is the star of our annual San Pedro lobster fest:

• The spiny lobster is also known as rock lobster or langouste.
• The spiny lobster is named because of it’s forward pointing spines that cover their body to help protect them from predators.
• Spiny lobsters are easily identifiable by two large, cream colored spots on the top bottom of the tail as you will see in the see picture below.
• Lobsters are nocturnal and will be out hunting on the reef at night. They make their homes in crevaces and caves in the coral reef, and other dark sheltered areas during the day.
• When confronted, spiny lobsters will quickly swim backwards by flutterng kick their abdominal area and tail.
• Lobsters are caught in wood traps, called pots which are submerged anywhere from 30ft – 200ft or more. In shallow water zinc roofing is often used by lobster fishermen to make a shed type area where lobsters can sleep in the shade during the day making for easy fishing.
• Click link to see a boat full of lobster picture from our lobster fishing adventure, after we caught a few with a gaff around back of the island Elito Arceo took us around front to watch the fishermen diving for lobster and they had a boat full.

You can learn more about Caribbean Spiny Lobster, also know as Panulirus Argus on Oceana Website. They have a great marine animal encyclopedia and a cause totally worth helping if you are looking for one. Lobster season in Belize runs from June 15th – midnight Feb 14th. To learn other marine life seasons and environmental etiquette visit,  Seafood Guide for Fishing in Belize. 

In Case you missed it or need a reminder of what is going on when and where, San Pedro Lobster Fest Schedule of Events 2014. Follow San Pedro Lobster Festival on Facebook for pictures of all the events throughout the festival.