he Orlando-based owner of Red Lobster is trying to do something no one has ever done on a large commercial scale: Lobster farming.
It won't be easy and will take years to figure out. Lobsters are tough to raise in captivity. They take a long time to grow, eat a lot and are susceptible to a contagious, fatal disease.
But if Darden Restaurants can make its project work, it could revolutionize the way lobsters get to our dinner plates. Growing lobsters could make them a cheaper commodity, experts say, much like aquaculture did for shrimp and salmon. But it could also create hardship for lobster fishermen around the world.
"If all goes well, of course, that's something I would imagine they would want to do is depend more on farming operations than wild-caught operations," said Scott Zimmerman, managing director of a Miami-based aquaculture-consulting company called SeafoodFarms.com.
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