Inside a specialised laboratory within the National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow, Cornwall, technician Chris Weston holds out what is referred to as a ‘berried hen’. It’s an egg-bearing female with the eggs in question clustered around her pleopods, the feathery appendages beneath her abdomen. On the other side of the window, members of the public peer in from the visitor centre. Like me, many are fascinated by the sight.

“We receive female lobsters from local fishermen – they call us up when they land one with eggs that are nearly ready to hatch, and one of the team will go and collect them,” Chris tells me.

It’s not an everyday occurrence, but it’s enough to keep the team here busy. And with a great deal of incentive. The European lobster is the UK’s most valuable marine species, and many coastal communities depend upon it to make a living. To help keep its wild population healthy, and the coastal economy in balance, the National Lobster Hatchery opened its doors just over a quarter of a century ago – back in the year 2000 – to help rear lobster hatchlings through their smallest and most vulnerable stages. It’s a helping hand that has proven to boost their chances of survival by up to 1,000 times.

The work is led by researchers and scientists who team up with fishermen, local restaurants and the wider community to keep the fishery sustainable. And the need is real. According to the hatchery, lobster populations in Scandinavia and the Mediterranean have collapsed entirely through overfishing, with no sign of recovery. UK lobsters are classified as vulnerable to local overexploitation while demand for them only increases. Today, 26 years on from first opening its doors, the National Lobster Hatchery works alongside current fisheries management measures to make sure the UK’s population of lobster doesn’t go the same way as Europe’s beleaguered population.

My attention is returned to the female lobster, laden with eggs. A single female can carry anywhere from 2,000 to 45,000 eggs depending on her size. If they are laid in the wild, only around one in 5,000 is expected to survive, and those are the odds at their most favourable. Gestation runs between nine and 12 months, with colder water extending the period. To control the volume of larvae, the hatchery keeps females at different temperatures in separate tanks, allowing staff to extend the natural breeding season and bring eggs on when they’re ready to care for them. It’s thanks to this part of the process that the room that makes this all possible is now referred to as the hatchery’s maternity ward.

“When the hen is ready, she will do a headstand to release the eggs which then naturally float to the surface,” Chris explains. “In the wild, this usually happens at night for safety, so predators can’t see the larvae.” The tiny lobsters here are collected each morning after hatching and moved into the maternity ward’s larval system to begin their first moult.

For the first two to four weeks of life, baby lobsters are classed as planktonic – drifting suspended in the water column, which leaves them extremely vulnerable to predation. To boost their survival rates, the NLH rears the larvae until they are around three months old, guiding them – like all crustaceans – through a series of moults, shedding their shells and taking on water to grow. Chris explains that at this Padstow hatchery, juveniles are carried through their first four stages in recirculating aquaculture systems that mimic wild conditions. It’s an intricate operation of pumps and filtration in which salinity, water quality and pH are checked daily. Once they reach their final larval stage – resembling perfect miniature lobsters at around two inches long – they are transferred to ‘Aquahive’ systems, which are honeycomb-style trays that separate individuals and thus prevent cannibalism.

“Each ‘Aquahive’ can carry around 4,000 animals and we have a capacity of over 24,000 in total,” Chris explains. By the time their last planktonic moult is complete – at roughly three months old – they have developed the instincts to burrow and shelter on the seabed and are ready for release.