Lobster Pots !!
- Thread starter Budgieboy
- Start date
prr
Well-Known Member
The reality is, the OP never used to keep a proper lookout. In future he will.....
dylanwinter
Well-Known Member
prv
Well-Known Member
Two possible answers for ??? :
1) Pots are laid in strings, along a rope joining them together. In at least some cases, both ends of the string are marked. So if you hit and chop off one of the buoys, they can still pick up the other.
2) Pot fishermen have grapnels (often bits of rebar welded to a short length of heavy pipe) which they can tow along the seabed to snag their gear. They know exactly where it is thanks to GPS, so a couple of passes with the grapnel should hook the rope (again, the fact they're laid in strings provides a wide target) and let them recover it.
Pete
capnsensible
Well-Known Member
He or you or I will still never see lots of poorly marked lobster pots unless you have some sort of magic vision or never go to sea.
BelleSerene
Well-Known Member
How passive-aggressive is that?!
michael_w
Well-Known Member
Lobster traps in the Channel? Pah! go sailing in Maine.
But you do get this for Sunday lunch at $4 a pound.
But you do get this for Sunday lunch at $4 a pound.
dylanwinter
Well-Known Member
both images are utterly repulsive
cryan
Well-Known Member
Eh, Not passive aggressive at all!
Creels are laid in specific areas to catch specific species. They are not shot willy nilly about the sea. There is absolutely no reason for anyone not avoid them.
There are people above suggesting that if you cut them the fisherman can easily grapple for them. This is not true at all pots shift slightly in the current and the position you shot them is only an approximate for getting back. I can only presume that the poster has never grappled for anything on the sea bed. I was once on an anchor handling vessel which was tasked to recover a rigg's anchor wires that had lost their markers and pennants in bad weather. This was chain with three foot links, the direction of lay which was marked on millions of pounds of survey gear and we used a grapple 10 ft long with six ft flukes. It took us 12 hours to snag it! How the hell is a fisherman ever going to find a 2inch rope?
A string of pots and gear can cost thousands. There is a lot of sea out there I think it is not unreasonable to avoid a mans creels.
Oh and for your info that statement is not aggressive either, passive or otherwise. It is just a statement of the facts.
prv
Well-Known Member
I would love to avoid them, for the excellent reasons that not avoiding them is certain to be inconvenient, may be expensive, and could also be dangerous.
If they would just mark the damn things properly, then I would be more able to avoid them which is what both of us want.
Last time I sailed off Cornwall they were mostly ok, with black flags on sticks. In the Solent currently there are a load of cuttlefish pots marked with dark blue 5-litre plastic cans; ok, not too difficult to spot in daylight on a calm day, but invisible at night and tricky in a bit of a chop. Some of them are laid across a popular anchorage, some of the others are in navigational channels. I have also come across gear marked with a single 1-litre bottle floating awash, and nets stretched across trafficked areas with no marks at all. I ran over two of the invisible nets in my old boat, which fortunately had a long keel with the prop in an aperture. In the new boat, if I hit that same net I'd have been disabled for sure. On a trip from Poole to Weymouth last year we passed very close to a couple of floats which were just under the surface, presumably to be retrieved at low tide. I have no idea how many similar ones we may have passed by without seeing them. To suggest that we could have spotted these submerged buoys by a better lookout is absurd.
To turn your phrase around slightly, there's a lot of boats around here, I think it is not unreasonable for a man to mark his creels.
Pete
D
Deleted member 36384
Guest
I guess the only question that is relevant is why do fishermen not use large, tall, flagged, conspicuous markers for their lobster pots? I do wonder if this is to with avoiding skulduggery and/or alerting other fishermen to ones patch. Perhaps, its time to mandate a standard conspicuous marker that must be used.
jac
Well-Known Member
So some of the pots that we're talking about are "marked" by something like a 5l oil can in dark blue with weed growing on it. In a force 3-4 bright sunny you might see them from 50 yards.
How the hell do you expect someone to see them at night in driving rain.
Add that to irresponsible people laying them between water that's too shallow and the deep channel that pleasure craft are restricted in using and you have a great combination.
How the hell do you expect someone to see them at night in driving rain.
Add that to irresponsible people laying them between water that's too shallow and the deep channel that pleasure craft are restricted in using and you have a great combination.
jac
Well-Known Member
QHM have. They expect a dan buoy and for them to not be laid in channels.
Of course the fishermen ignore the rules.
mikeinkwazi
Well-Known Member
From this remark it is obvious you have never been to sea! Have a nice day
macd
Well-Known Member
I'm 100% with prv (post #30) on this. And if they're so damned expensive, surely the owner has a vested interest in looking after them a little better than dangling them from a bit of scrap plastic.
prr
Well-Known Member
I've been a seaman for nearly 40 years. Keep a better lookout!
Last edited:
capnsensible
Well-Known Member
How much of that time on a small leisure vessel?
Seven Spades
Well-Known Member
If you have been reading these forums you will have seen a similar thread I started about pots in the anchorage of Osborne Bay. I arrived at night in the dark and woke up in the morning to find I was surrounded by a series of BLACK floating gallon plastic pot markers. Keeping a good lookout is not going to help, it is the black cat in a coal cellar syndrome. As it happens I don't have too many problems with people laying pots as long as they are properly marked and not placed in a stupid and inconsiderate place. In my case they were not only unacceptably marked but were also placed in a stupid place where quite frankly they ought not to have been.
Sandyman
Well-Known Member
prv
Well-Known Member
I don't have any problems with people laying properly marked pots in most of the sea. How else are they to earn a living and I to eat crab?
I just ask that they mark them properly. All it takes is a length of bamboo cane and a strip of old polytarp.
Pete
