The lobster season ends on March 31, and fishermen are allowed 5 days to get all of their traps out of the water for the 4 month summer closure. For the average full time fisherman who works 2,000 traps, retrieving them all in 5 days is an impossibility. Even if the weather was perfect, which it rarely is at that time of the year, there are few boats that could handle a load of 400 wet traps in a single day.
What it means then, is that fishermen must start bringing in their traps long before the end of the season. March is generally one of the windiest months, but is also the best winter month for catching lobster. Pulling traps in a 20 knot wind is ordinary, but placing a large load of water soaked traps on a 40’ boat under such conditions is not only difficult, but also extremely dangerous. Therefore, in order to insure all traps are in by April 5, a fisherman must bring in smaller loads of 50-75 traps at every opportunity in March, and forego resetting them, thus eliminating the possibility of having a profitable month.
Under the most extraordinary circumstances, the Fish and Wildlife Commission will grant a short extension for trap retrieval, but normally requests are refused. In years past, a fisherman could bring in traps at any time during the closed season. If memory serves, the first limitation was placed at 30 days, and then was reduced to 10 days which remained in effect for many years. The present 5 day retrieval limit was instituted around 1990, and was little more than a back door way of reducing the effective length of the lobster season.
The month of March used to be one of the most productive months for Key West fishermen, and gave a much needed boost entering the 4 month closed season. Today, most all production comes only from a final pull during trap retrieval, and March has the lowest landings of the 8 month season.
Several years ago, the State of Florida instituted a closed season trap removal program. After the April 5 deadline, the FWC hires certain fishermen to remove the remaining traps. Each trap that is found is destroyed, and after a 10 trap allowance the owner of the traps is fined $10 apiece. Unless the fine is promptly paid, a license to work the following year will not be issued.
To the average person it probably seems a reasonable solution to a relatively minor problem. The fisherman, however, views it in an entirely different light, and while few would argue with removing lost traps during the closed season, like most other government efforts, the devil is in the details.
Let us understand from the beginning that no fisherman would purposely leave a trap in the water. The average trap cost is between $25 and $30, and equally important, consumes valuable off-season time in which a man could be earning money by fishing instead of spending money building traps. Every fisherman loses some traps during a season, and while bad weather is the prime culprit, the reasons are as varied as they would be for anyone trying to keep track of 2,000 separate items spread over several hundred square miles.
On very rare occasions, a fisherman will get so disgusted with his business that he will just give up, and abandon his traps. Sometimes too, a hired captain will not live up to his responsibility, and purposely leave the owner’s traps in the water, rather than expend the time and effort to work for nothing. But for an owner operator to leave any significant amount of traps in the water, it is almost always a case of running out of time.
For those fishermen who depend on the month of March for an important part of their income, it seems extraordinarily unfair that they should have to give up a month of the season because some fishery managers in Tallahassee, decided that they could only have 5 days to bring in their traps. They see no sense in the ruling, and believe that it singles out the fishermen who specialize in working the tough winter months. In truth, there is no logic for the 5 day removal limit, other than to effectually reduce the length of the season.
While few would argue with the State attending to lost and abandoned traps during a closed season, their removal program has the air of just another inefficient bureaucratic operation. Why, for example is a fisherman not allowed to bring in a lost trap if he finds it on April 6, or even June 21? Why is another boat never allowed to retrieve a lost trap for a fisherman – even during the season?
If the goal is to get the traps out of the water during the closed season, then why do we handcuff the fishermen themselves? The best trap retrievers in the world are commercial fishermen, and in years past every located trap was either retrieved and returned to its owner by whoever found it, or the owner was notified of its location so he could pick it up himself. It would seem that every trap retrieved by the fishermen themselves, would save the State of Florida the trouble of finding, pulling, and then destroying the trap.
What then are fishery managers afraid of? That their little removal program will be cut, or is it that weak willed fishermen will not be able to resist the temptation to keep whatever lobster they find in the lost traps? Perhaps they fear that unscrupulous fishermen will steal someone else’s traps, or maybe even – in an apparently nightmarish scenario – a fishermen will take advantage of the opportunity to bring in his traps later, and try to work the entire lobster season?
In the big picture, the issue of lost and abandoned traps is a relatively small one, but the loss of March production is not. It’s also a fact that the number of fishermen affected is not large, and goes completely unnoticed by most people. It is however, one more unwarranted cut in industry profitability, and yet another example of the bureaucracy’s power to make seemingly innocuous rules, that actually conceals a cleverly hidden effort reduction. So… Let the State have their removal program. But how about adding a little common sense to the equation, and allow any fisherman to retrieve a trap whenever he sees one?
