Did You Know (Lobster Traps)

Did you know A lobster trap or lobster pot is a portable trap which traps lobsters or crayfish and is used in lobster fishing. A lobster trap can hold several lobsters. Lobster traps were traditionally constructed out of wood but they are now usually plastic coated metal. An opening permits the lobster to enter a tunnel of netting. Pots are usually constructed in two parts, called the “chamber” or “kitchen”, where there is bait, and exits into the “parlour”, where it is trapped from escape. Lobster pots are usually dropped to the sea floor about a dozen at a time, and are marked by a buoy so they can be picked up later.  A piece of bait, often fish or chum, is placed inside the trap, and the traps are dropped onto the sea floor. A long rope is attached to each trap, at the end of which is a plastic or styrofoam buoy that bears the owner’s license number. The entrances to the traps are designed to be one-way entrances only. The traps are checked every other day by the fisherman and rebaited if necessary. One study indicated that lobster traps are very inefficient and allow almost all lobsters to escape.  Yet, this inefficiency also allows younger lobsters to escape and breed, thus reducing the possibility of overfishing.  In other words, we only get to eat the not very smart lobsters that couldn’t figure out how to get out of the trap.

In the 1950’s, during the Great Lobster War, my father, Willis Lefavour, and his partner, Bob Winchell, did an underwater shoot in the Damariscotta River for Salt Water Farms in Damariscotta, Maine, of lobsters entering traps.  Their photographic documentation proved the previously unknown fact that lobsters enter the trap head first.  Before that it was not known for sure how they entered.  Since lobsters swim backwards, it was thought that they could have entered either backwards or head first.  For the shoot, they used ASA 10 film and kept their light meters in mason jars.

E.J. Lefavour

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