BOSTON - A baffling disease that makes lobsters ugly, but not inedible, has crept northward from the Buzzards Bay hotspot where it's afflicted lobsters for several years. The numbers of infected lobsters are far too tiny to cause panic, but the disease's progress is being eyed warily by regional researchers and lobstermen. The disease doesn't affect the meat, but a lobster with a corroded, blackened shell is a tough sell. "You go and spend $8 for a lobster, you want a good-looking lobster," said Edward Heaphy, a lobsterman of 50 years from Dover, N.H. In 1998, diseased lobsters began filling...
