It is fact that lobster traps don’t last forever, but there could be a second life for some. Fishermen and lobster industry regulators have accepted such gear loss, but the slow accumulation of lost traps on the bottom has attracted the interest of officials because of the potential impact the traps could have on underwater habitat. To manage the growing problem of lost lobster traps the State Planning Office is proposing to use federal stimulus money to pay for a $2.3 million, 18-month project that would retrieve some of these lost traps from the ocean depths.
The federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expected to announce next month whether it will fund the project, which would run from May of this year through October 2010. According to the state officials they do not know how many lost traps are in Maine waters but they do know how many replacement tags they issue each year. Each year lobstermen in Maine are allowed to buy up to 800 tags apiece, which they then fasten to their traps to identify themselves as the owner of the gear.
Carl Wilson, chief lobster scientist for the Department of Marine Resources, told that to make up for lost traps, the department allows fishermen to replace 10 percent of the number of tags they buy each year. DMR sells about 3.2 million trap tags annually, he said, so with that 10 percent replacement figure, it could be estimated that 320,000 traps are lost every 12 months.
The proposal estimates that the project will result in approximately 80,000 traps being recovered. Wilson opined that recovering lost traps is not the only objective of the project. The project would have the added benefit of providing a few days’ work to hundreds of fishermen who help in the recovery effort. A handful of scientists, technicians, divers and administrators also would get temporary work through the project.
