Fuel 100
Agree. And I'd suspect the investigators and insurers would soon abandon the likelihood of overweight lobsters as a cause.
Unless, and please take this as pure hypothesizing to support a hypothetical overweight cargo scenario.
What percentage of the aircraft's cubic capacity would fifty tons of lobster in styrofoam boxes (an earlier poster has explained how they're packed, pre-cooled into deep sleep, no water, etc) consume? Guess: 2/3rds? The previously loaded cargo, lawn mowers/tractors, would have been pretty dense.
Next, are 50t parcels the norm? If 5t parcels are more the custom, day after day, then it might be that packing them in a little more densely might develop into one of those accepted habits that put the gross weight out by an acceptable ton or so.
Then, once underdeclaring on small parcels is accepted practice, along comes a much larger booking. Nobody's batted an eyelid over it for yonks so accepting underdeclared weights has become industry policy. Etc.
All the above is stretched hypothesis; when you sit back and think of all the possible circumstances, gross underdeclaring of weight just doesn't seem to fit anywhere. Factor into it that Canadians selling lobsters to Europe are likely to be reasonably acquainted with operational restrictions pertaining to lobsterboats and able to extrapolate onto aircraft what exceeding those restrictions might incur.
So, it just doesn't fit, with me at least.