The tidal pounds have been around since the 1920s or 1930s. It's almost a hundred-year-old technology now, I guess. But the tank houses have come in the last 15 years. Basically, you can build a tank house anywhere in the world. There's one in Kentucky because it's close to a FedEx. I don't know of any studies done, but everybody in the business seems to accept that it's a poorer quality of lobster in the tank house.
At one time at home--and it isn't done anymore--they used to bring soft-shell lobsters from Maine in September and hold them, let them harden up and feed them, and actually some years they'd get more weight out of that pound. That's when lobsters were scarcer and there was a better market in the fall. They could get more weight out of the pound than they actually put in. They'd usually feed them codfish bones and salt herring, stuff like that.
But the tidal pound only works in areas.... We have a 28-foot rise and fall of the tide at home. It's a dam about six feet below water up, and it has slats in it so the water goes through the slats and adds air to the water. When there's high water, it changes all the water in the pound, and when the tide goes back out you have six feet of water there for the next four or five hours to keep the lobsters alive until the tide comes in again. There's a diver who goes down every few days and checks them. They add extra air into the water by aeration, to keep them good.
Definitely, the buyers at home feel it's a better way of keeping lobsters as far as the quality is concerned, but they don't seem to have as good an outcome. They have less shrinkage, as they call it, with the pounds than with the tank houses.
Also, in southwest Nova Scotia there's not enough tidal range and too much fresh water for the pounds to work. If a lobster comes in contact with fresh water, it dies very quickly, so the tidal pounds work in places where there is no fresh water at all. If you have a level of fresh water on top, it lies there and kills the lobsters.