After repeated passes through our fishing grounds without spotting it, we were forced to conclude that we’d lost our first trap of the season. We’re both fairly sure that it fell victim to the prop on someone’s boat. There are typically a couple of reasons that gear goes missing: a) surly commercial lobstermen cut them when someone has invaded their territory and/or wrapped around their fishing gear, b) gear failure (e.g. knot coming untied on the pot warp), or c) gear entanglement in the motor of a passing vessel. Our gear is set well away from other lobstermen, and as each buoy is marking a single trap there is no groundline from one trap to another that might get set over someone else’s gear causing it to be entangled and cut. So it goes.
In other news, we did haul not one but two large v-notch female lobsters, the first of the season. As a method of
conservation, both non-commercial and commercial harvesters are required to cut a “v-notch” in the flipper to the right of the middle flipper on egg-bearing females. This identifies them as productive breeding animals, and their preservation is critical to conserving the resource.
the haulress
the long hauler
[...] may remember that I had lost a trap a while ago. Well, for $15 each we bought two used traps from a retiring lobsterman of 50 years in South [...]