Posted on 11/26/2009 6:48:46 PM PST by Daffynition
Those rubber-dipped galvy cages would certainly last for decades underwater. The entire cage is dipped and the metal is sealed. The doors use rubber hinges. The entire point is to make them last forever. The solution is to make them with doors that will fall open after a few months.
And yes, the lobsters to “bait themselves.” I saw it myself in 80% of the dozens of lost traps I checked out. You would see shell parts, full carapaces, dead rotten bugs, new dead bugs, and live new bugs. It was a continuous chain of death-—for nothing. I love to eat em, but wiping them out stupidly for NOTHING is beyond stupid.
Ah ha, so I was right in my post #20. I had not read yours until after I posted.
It’s not a theory, it’s a fact I have seen with my own eyes a hundred times when diving in the Keys and Bahamas.
I don’t know anything about cold water traps, just the lobster (longusta spiny lobsters) traps in the FL Keys and Bahamas.
No “escape” hatches tied with string. In the Bahamas those rubber-dipped galvy cages were the WORST. Perpetual killing machines when they are lost. Saw it with my own eyes a hundred times.
Well, I would hope that the people trying to do the catching would see the mistake. There is a certain free-market component to this equation. Foxes and rabbits type. If they come close to wiping out the lobsters, they will stop fishing for them, and then the lobsters will return.
Hopefully, not with a vengeance!
I think the lobsterman in their boats just don’t see what’s going on down below like the divers do. They want simple, tough, zero maint. traps. And they have them! So zero maint that they’ll keep killing for years after the float and rope are gone.
These lobstermen are so stupid they are competing against 3 or 4 old lost traps for every one they have with a rope and a float. It used to piss me off so much, I’d sabotage them all, by cutting the ropes and opening the doors and tying them back.
For every trap with a float, it’s just a matter of time until the rope frays from UV and breaks, or is cut by a boat prop. Then, the traps become perpetual killing machines, for NOTHING.
I guess I’m in an extremely cynical mood today. I read the article not so much as “We’re worried about killing the lobsters” as “We’re not happy that the lobsters died and we didn’t get a chance to eat them”
I’ve done alot of crabbing and salmon fishing and one thing I know is that if something dies in the water, it DOES NOT go to waste!
That’s what all the herring and flounders and crabs and octopuses depend on!
I believe you.
They do go to waste inside of a perpetual trap though, that’s the point. Stuff gets in, it doesn’t get out to do its thing elsewhere. It dead-ends in the trap. Unless philosophically, you are saying that little microbes will decay them and their atoms will float out eventually.
Not just microbes. Even giant blue finned tuna start out in a tiny larval stage. You know what I mean.
I agree in general it’s not a good thing. Hell, I’ve seen white-tailed deer get their legs all snagged up in barbed wire fences and had to cut them lose.
But I’m not going to suggest they stop using barbed wire. And like I said, I have crab pots in my shed right now, and to use them you have to tie the escape holes shut.
We have the technology. It’s just convincing people to use it. If they chose not to use it and their catch declines, well, ain’t my fault.
It seems to me that making the ‘hinges’ out of carbon steel would take care of this problem. They wouldn’t last very long down there.
Dipping the entire trap in tar tends to negate that strategy.
First generation Maine lobster pots used to be made of lath with a curved top. Supposedly to allow the pot to roll with the strong currents. Second generation pots are more *square,* and more easily stacked.
When a lobster enters through the net “head” to go after the bait in a bait bag placed in the “kitchen”. When it tries to exit it lands in the “bedroom” or “parlor”. Some traps have more than one kitchen and bedroom. Traps are required to have an escape vent that is large enough to let all but the legal size lobsters escape. Traps also are equipped with runners that help prevent legs, claws and antennae from being pinched between the bottom of the trap and the boat when the traps are hauled. Most areas also require traps to have a biodegradable "ghost panel". This panel will eventually degrade and release, allowing a large space for lobsters to escape from "ghost traps" (those that have broken free of their buoy lines and are therefore unretrieveable).
I smell another crisis.
so far the farmers of kalifornia, now the fishermen.
This is divide and conquer at it’s best!
We need to help all of these folks fight thier fight.
I am very upset by the thought of the lobsters being wasted, killed for nothing. Very sad.
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