“Saying ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t even begin to cover the damage,” said lobsterman Leroy Bridges, of Deer Isle. He was talking about recreational boaters who get their boats wrapped around lobster gear and cut the buoys from the rope attached to traps on the ocean bottom. “If I were to reach in your [back] pocket and pull out $150 …” He let his sentence trail off.
Bridges, who prefers balloons with his name and phone number on them to the usual Styrofoam buoys painted with his colors, recalled a woman who phoned him to say, “We went afoul [of your gear], but it’s all right: I’ve got [the balloon] right here in my hand. We had to cut it free.” Bridges thanked her for saving the balloon, but said, “It’s the $120 worth of traps I’m worried about.” She said she had no idea fishermen could spend that much on a trap. (They can fish as many as three traps in a string in Maine state waters, with each trap alone costing $50 to $70, not including the cost of rope, toggles and buoy.)
In August, Bridges said, the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta and the New York Yacht Club came through Deer Isle’s Jericho Bay. “They literally decimated our bay,” he said. “In [that week] there was probably around $10,000 worth of fishing gear lost.”
Frank Gotwals, of Stonington, has a more measured view of the problem than Bridges and many others. Nevertheless, he admitted this summer he saw a lot of buoys floating in Jericho Bay. “When the New York Yacht Club came through,” he said, “I picked up half a dozen buoys that had been cut off. In that case, the evidence was all through the water. The islands are covered with them.”
It’s been an ongoing conflict between lobstermen and those who operate recreational craft, cruise ships, tugs and ferries. And the problem is not confined to Maine waters.
In August, Frederick Dauphinee, who fishes off Boston’s South Shore, reported he was having to make buoys for the second time this past summer because, he said, of “charter cruises, ferries, tugs and rodeo riders knocking them off.” He explained the term rodeo riders as people in cigarette boats who “operate with complete abandon.” By mid-September Dauphinee said he’d found 12 cut buoys in one day. He lost eight buoys and five traps that day, himself. Two other South Shore fishermen lost nine buoys apiece. He said, “Why should everything we do be at risk?” Another lobsterman, taking a more sanguine approach, noted that having to replace buoys and other gear is part of the cost of summer fishing.
With so much more gear in the water than ever before, in certain high traffic areas boats are forced to play dodge-em or plow right through lobster buoys, getting pot-warp wrapped around propellers and rudders and usually having to sever the buoy from the trap below. Lobstermen end up losing valuable fishing time and money – a double whammy – each time they have to replace each trap lost, not to mention having to purchase and add new trap tags and make replacement buoys.
Recreational boaters, trying to slalom their way through channels and thorofares filled with lobster gear, have been known to suspect that lobstermen deliberately set traps in high traffic areas to keep recreational boaters away, but that kind of thinking reflects ignorance of the art and mystery of lobstering.
Lobsters move about on the ocean floor, searching for food. Fishermen follow, trying to find them and taking their traps to where they hope the creatures have moved. They then put down their bait-filled traps, hoping lobsters will crawl in for a meal and get trapped. “They place their traps for maximum lobster production rather than intimidation,” says a staff member at the Maine Department of Marine Resources. Rather than losing a substantial investment just to foil yachtsmen, fishermen are far more likely to avoid setting traps in high-traffic areas. Gotwals agrees, saying, “A lot of guys do stay out of channels. Most fishermen know if they set there, they’re at higher risk.”
Fishermen will be quick to admit they are just as guilty as other boaters of parting gear unintentionally with their own boats; but they’re likely to know the owner, grab the line and tie something onto it, then call and let the owner know what happened and where. And while many recreational sailors make sincere efforts to avoid getting wrapped in pot warp and having to cut buoy lines, others see buoys as nothing but nuisances. Cruise ships’ officers, five or six decks up, can’t even see them; ferries, tugs and some recreational boats will not deviate from a given course or GPS plot; whale watch boats wander all over the place; racing sailors want to win; and some people are just plain inconsiderate.
“Sailboat owners [say] they are inconvenienced by all the traps in the water,” said lobsterman Dana Betts, of Brooksville. “This is our living, and they should respect that. This is the prime time of year [for fishing]. If one of those boats gets in any kind of trouble, fishermen are the first to help get them out of the mess and save the boat. They ought to reciprocate by saving the fishermen’s traps.”
Snagging lobster gear can be dangerous to the yachtsman, said Curtis Rindlaub, of Peaks Island, author of A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast and the Maine Coast Guides for Small Boats. He reported having seen an older woman at the helm and an older man in the water with a knife, trying to cut line caught in the propeller. Rindlaub said of such a scenario, “It’s just a matter of time before someone dies of a heart attack.”
Richard Sullivan, M. D., of Cape Elizabeth, who has sailed as far east as Cutler, agrees. He never snagged lobster gear until last summer, and then it happened twice in one day in Penobscot Bay. He said, “I sail all summer, and it never happens in Casco Bay.
“The first time, I didn’t know what happened,” he explained. “It was totally disorienting because I make it a habit not to sail over lobster traps.” (Sullivan said he was sailing, not motoring.) “To get at that line – it’s way under water – you have to have a dinghy, unless you have a ten-foot boat hook. Then you have to get in the water, and if you’re 75 years old, and it’s October, you’re screwed. It’s very dangerous.”
Sullivan objects particularly to “tide” or “wash” buoys set close to a trap buoy. “What happens when you’re sailing into a whole slew of gear,” he said, “you go next to a buoy and there’s a taut line just under the surface [connected to a second buoy]. That’s a booby trap.”
He said he felt guilty about cutting the first line: he thought it was his fault. The second time he got tangled, though, he said, “I realized I was a victim of a booby trap and felt good about cutting the line. Next time, I’m going to be armed with a ten-foot boat hook with a razor.”
When Betts heard that story, he said, “That’s the exact attitude that lobstermen resent.” He explained that there are tide holes, places where the tides run so strongly that buoys will run under the surface. To make sure they can find their traps, he said, fishermen “will tie on a second flotation device on the very tip end of the line.” “We’re not trying to sabotage anyone,” he said. Betts wonders what recreational boaters expect of the Maine fisherman and asked, “Do they expect that we are going to put our traps on the bank till after they leave?”
Gotwals voiced much the same opinion when he said, “There’s a feeling among fishermen that they’re paying the price for other people’s recreation. At the same time, [yachtsmen] feel they have the right to enjoy these waters.”
Another fisherman says the “tide” or “wash” buoys start at about Mussel Ridge, west of Rockland. “The way they’re tied,” he said, “they seem awfully close to the main buoy; you can’t avoid ’em. If fishermen rigged a wash buoy or put a toggle underneath the surface to stay below, they’d lose a lot less gear.” He admitted, though, that fishermen aren’t likely to change the way they rig their gear.
Despite the lobstermen’s ire, recreational boaters have a formidable weapon they can use to avoid getting tangled in fishing gear: cutters.
Roger Duncan, who wrote for many years (with John P. Ware) A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast, explained spurs or cutters: “On the shaft of a power boat, very often, they have two little nubs that, if they catch a trap, will cut it,” he said. “It can happen without the operator knowing it’s happening.”
One company that manufactures these cutters has an Internet write-up entitled “Line Busters.” Rindlaub’s Internet site, diamondpass.com, has a place for yachtsmen to voice their opinions on cutters and buoys. Rindlaub said, “I would love feedback from fishermen. I’d be happy to post it.” He said his job is to help yachtsmen understand and respect fishermen and their livelihoods.
Duncan’s son, Robert, has taken over the writing and editing of his Cruising Guide, the new edition of which just came out. “On page 584,” Robert Duncan said, “there’s something to the effect that if you get wound up and you find you have to cut, it’s a real nice thing to tie the buoy on. If you can’t, at least you can find out whose buoy it is, and it would be better than polite to check it out and let him know.”
He added, “From a personal perspective, recreational boaters need to respect the efforts of working men on the water. Essentially, we’re playing and they’re working.” He said, “I am not enthusiastic about cutters because they tend to make yachtsmen ignore trap buoys.” (Sullivan, the sailor snagged in Penobscot bay, said he was “totally against spurs” and that he would “cut selectively only when snagged.”)
“Sailboats are much less likely than power vessels to get snarled,” Roger Duncan said, “but very often these days they’re under power, and propellers can more easily get wrapped around traplines.”
On the other hand, Diane Jellis said in the two years she’s been manager of the Portland Yacht Club, no member has mentioned the problem – understandable, perhaps, since the club is based in Falmouth Foreside, a largely recreational harbor. Although the club has a race to Monhegan, there are no buoys in the water out there because the island’s lobstering season closes in May. “[The boats] went right through the shipping lane,” she said; “we got permission ahead. The people in the shipping lane had the right of way.” Also, the club has “closed course” racing in Casco Bay.
She said she did get her own power boat caught in a buoy, but noted Harraseeket Bay, off Freeport, where she moors it, “is peppered with buoys.”
Others have come up with various remedies. R. Anderson Pew, who sails out of Northeast Harbor, suggests that certain thorofares have marked zones within them a few hundred feet wide that would be off-limits to lobster gear. Lobstermen could have as many traps as they want elsewhere in the channel. That way, he said, “Everybody comes out ahead.” The areas he’d like to see set up that way are Eastern Way, one of the portals to Great Harbor, passing through the middle and out the south portal, Western Way, off Mount Desert; Eggemoggin Reach between Brooklin and Deer Isle; and Merchant’s Row, off Stonington.
Bridges and Betts think that wouldn’t work: Bridges, because sailboats need to tack, and he figures they’d have to stray outside any gear-free zone. He and Betts prefer putting a cage around the propeller, which costs far less than installing cutters. For sailboats with spade, or hinged rudders, Betts suggested installing a false skeg: a piece of metal going from the bottom of the keel to the bottom of the rudder. “Then it would be able to sail right over the top of ropes and buoys and toggles,” he said. “With the proper equipment on their boats to prevent snagging the lines and buoys, all inconveniences could be avoided.”
“If a yachtsman gets wound up,” Roger Duncan suggested, “he might get on the radio and say, I’m such and such a vessel and I’m right here and I’m all wound up in a trap. I’d be real glad of some help before I have to cut it.” Bridges agreed, saying, “I know of nobody who would not respond to such a call.”
“The problem of snagging fishing gear won’t be resolved any time soon,” he added, “but until then a little respect would go a long, long way.”
Rindlaub’s site is diamondpass.com. It has tips on how to avoid snagging gear. Send email to mail@diamondpass.com or letters to Curtis Rindlaub, 19 Brook Lane, Peaks Island, ME 04108. The article on spurs can be found on the Internet at: DIY-boat.com/Pages/DIYP/prolinks/2001_4/proj2.html