December 29, 2020 — The possibility of hauling lobster traps from the ocean’s bottom by using an acoustic signal rather than a length of rope has been called crazy and viewed as impossibly expensive by many in the lobster industry.
But trials underway off the Massachusetts coast could be moving the impossible to the realm of reality, according to Sean Hayes, chief of the protected species branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass.
Although the trials are in Massachusetts, Maine is the nation’s biggest lobster fishery, with over 100 million pounds landed last year.
Hayes presented an update on the technology to the New England Fishery Management Council at its virtual meeting in earlier this month.
Studies of the technology were launched in response to the decline of the endangered North Atlantic right whale, which migrates through U.S. and Canadian waters that also are lobstering grounds. Vessel collisions and fishing gear entanglements are considered the two leading causes of injury and death of the whales.