Leave No Traps Behind: Best Practices to Prevent Lobster Trap Loss video transcript

For more on this project, check out the project profile. I like being out on the ocean-- love it. The Channel Islands are really very pristine. It’s an amazing, pristine environment. This time of year especially the islands are really green and we've seen exceptional numbers of birds and forage fish, tons of pelagic red crabs and anchovies, so the environment out there is just exciting and alive. The most enjoyable part about being a commercial lobster fisherman is the freedom it provides me-- being my own boss, being on the water, being underneath the sun and not fluorescent lights, and just enjoying what I do. If a new fisherman was to actually ask advice of a veteran fisherman, most specifically about trap loss and how to avoid it, you might get some really valuable information. These are left in the water five months at a time. You string your entire set of gear. It’s quite expensive and it’s your source of income, so you’re protecting them—they’re your baby. You want to know what's gonna happen to them. You wanna do everything in your power to make certain that you don't lose your gear. If you lose a trap, then the opportunity to catch in that trap is gone and not only that, that trap can damage the resource as it continues to fish and we all kind of know that, and so it hurts the grounds if you have a trap that's lost and potentially fishing. Traps can continue to capture lobsters and other species when they're lost until they break apart. Some lobster fishermen are self-organizing and are making an effort to clean up traps that end up on the beach. The primary loss of gear is due to negligence. Weather is the factor that actually causes the loss of the gear, but generally it’s negligence by a fisherman and not being able to move his traps. The NOAA Marine Debris Program, along with the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, have been interviewing lobster fishermen to develop these best practices for prevention of gear loss. Of course you want to avoid setting your pots in anchorages or in the mouths of harbors because you're far more likely to lose that gear due to the boat traffic. It's common sense to not set a whole lot of gear in areas that are going to be heavily trafficked. You need to have your trap properly weighted because when the swell comes up, it can pull your travelers away from where it is and drag it shallower or throw it on the beach, or it can just simply drag it deeper and sink your bouy. Using steel is far better than using concrete because concrete has a great deal of air in it and it's not nearly as effective at holding the trap to the bottom. In order to stay abreast of the weather, I spend a lot of time on a website called 17ft.com. It gives a projection of the swell, as well as NOAA’s readout of their forecast for the five or six days into the future. Watch what other veteran fisherman do when the storm and the swell happen—learn. I mean, the second that they move their gear out, you should be right behind them. You're going to fish in a high current zone, you need a lot of buoy, but the more buoy you put on a trap, the more likelihood it is to slide away if it's not properly weighted. Weighted lines is paramount to be able to make sure that boats can travel around them is safely as possible. In order to keep someone from running over your line and cutting out your trap, you want the last third of your line to be sinking. To get those dimensions accurately, we fathom it really fast, so just counting out your six-foot wingspan or whatever your you’re your height is, just count out your depth and then you attach the floating to sinking with a fisherman's knot or a lovers knot. Most fishermen know how to bring two lines together. By law, the buoy number has to be kept in a condition is easily readable by the enforcement. Secondly, the more drag you have is created by the more growth you have on it. The cleaner the line, the less drag you're going to have, the less opportunity for that trap to be able to be pulled away by the current or by surf. This is a line cook. Inside of it is engine coolant. It fits in a barrel. To fill the barrel with water, I just plug this into my engine and this assumes the temperature of my engine which is about 180 degrees. So, if you fill it up with water and you run about an hour, then the water’s 180 degrees. So you take the coil of rope as the trap comes over side and you take the entire coil and you just hold it underwater-- 10 seconds, 15 seconds-- and then take it out, and it looks like nothing has happened but in fact you basically killed the growth. You throw the trap back over, you come back in the next day and the rope is brand new. When you set a trap, it’s super beneficial to make a mark on your your GPS so that you have a waypoint to go back to. Not only will you consistently recover gear that may be pulled down in the current or moved slightly, you can easily find it—it could be foggy, it could be horribly windy-- it can be really difficult to see traps. Having them logged into your plotter is really beneficial in getting to your gear, as well as servicing it regularly. With the next fishing season, there will be a limit per permitee of 300 traps. The trap limit is going to go into regulatory action this coming year and for the years to come. I think it will significantly reduce the amount of trap loss. Each permitee will be given 300 trap tags by the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Each trap must carry a tag while it’s in use or while it's in transit on the water and those traps tags will be renewed each year. The Department's goal in managing lobster is sustainability and for the fishery in perpetuity. It’s a neat community. What we do for a living is pretty special. I get it and if you're doing it next to me, you get it too, we share that.