You may have noticed a certain doe-eyed lobster (and similar doe-eyed mascots) kicking around on our GitHub repositories, on presentation slides, and scattered across Islandora. This guy:

The lobster (also known as Clawde or the Clawbster) stems from the first Islandora conference in 2015, which was held on Prince Edward Island, the birthplace of Islandora and a region known for its fresh lobster. During the lead up to the conference, a helpful Islandora community member on Twitter tweeted "Every time you fail to tell a colleague about the upcoming Islandora conference, a lobster dies of sadness." We responded with a hastily sketched drawing of a sad lobster:

The sad lobster achieved mild viral status in the Islandora community, and when the time came to select a logo for the Islandora conference t-shirts, the planning committee decided that a happier version would be just the thing:

Around the same time, development was starting on what would become Islandora 8. It was codenamed CLAW, and the doe-eyed lobster from Islandoracon attached himself as a natural mascot. After the first few GitHub repos for various Islandora 8 components and microservices were given mascots, it became a tradition, and now all Islandora 8 repos have some kind of cartoon mascot related to the lobster.