Harrassed by lobsterman!

[RIOceanographer]

I had to work today, but I was able to cram in an early 8am dive at Bull Point this morning. The dive was great except that on the swim out to the site, a lobsterman pulls right in to us while we are swimming on the surface and starts yelling at us and threatening us if we don't leave his traps alone.

Yes I know this sort of incident isn't uncommon, I am sure many of you have had similar encounters, but it still bugs me. Seriously, how many divers do you know that would pick a lobster trap clean? I am sure they exist, but they are a tiny minority of divers. It is like yelling at everyone that walks near your vehicle, "Don't steal my car or I will hunt you down!"

Funny part is that lobsterman are far more likely to mess with each others traps than a diver is. I worked at the National Marine Fisheries Service for a few years so I have heard some stories. They will not hesitate to clean out another lobsterman's traps, cut the buoys loose or even do something they call "taking the traps for a ride" where they will pick up the traps and move them to a new spot where the owner can't find them. All because they think someone is fishing in their "turf". As if it is possible own a piece of ocean! It is a nasty business.

Of course, in my book, best course of action if one of these guys gets on you is to just play it cool and avoid confrontation. Never start an argument with a crazy person.

Okay, end of rant. Back to work.

 

[cdiver2]

I had to work today, but I was able to cram in an early 8am dive at Bull Point this morning. The dive was great except that on the swim out to the site, a lobsterman pulls right in to us while we are swimming on the surface and starts yelling at us and threatening us if we don't leave his traps alone.

Yes I know this sort of incident isn't uncommon, I am sure many of you have had similar encounters, but it still bugs me. Seriously, how many divers do you know that would pick a lobster trap clean? I am sure they exist, but they are a tiny minority of divers. It is like yelling at everyone that walks near your vehicle, "Don't steal my car or I will hunt you down!"

Funny part is that lobster man are far more likely to mess with each others traps than a diver is. I worked at the National Marine Fisheries Service for a few years so I have heard some stories. They will not hesitate to clean out another lobster man's traps, cut the buoys loose or even do something they call "taking the traps for a ride" where they will pick up the traps and move them to a new spot where the owner can't find them. All because they think someone is fishing in their "turf". As if it is possible own a piece of ocean! It is a nasty business.

Of course, in my book, best course of action if one of these guys gets on you is to just play it cool and avoid confrontation. Never start an argument with a crazy person.

Kay, end of rant. Back to work.

Had the same problem on a shore dive, when we returned from the dive the lobster man was waiting for us on shore but he did not say a word when we had empty hands. We told him we had seen pots with lobster in and a holding pen with about 40 lobster in, he then GAVE us a couple of lobster and drove us and our gear up the track about 500 yards and 150' to the top. We gave him our phone # and told him if he ever needed a diver give us a call.

 

[matt_unique]

I had to work today, but I was able to cram in an early 8am dive at Bull Point this morning. The dive was great except that on the swim out to the site, a lobsterman pulls right in to us while we are swimming on the surface and starts yelling at us and threatening us if we don't leave his traps alone.

Yes I know this sort of incident isn't uncommon, I am sure many of you have had similar encounters, but it still bugs me. Seriously, how many divers do you know that would pick a lobster trap clean? I am sure they exist, but they are a tiny minority of divers. It is like yelling at everyone that walks near your vehicle, "Don't steal my car or I will hunt you down!"

Funny part is that lobsterman are far more likely to mess with each others traps than a diver is. I worked at the National Marine Fisheries Service for a few years so I have heard some stories. They will not hesitate to clean out another lobsterman's traps, cut the buoys loose or even do something they call "taking the traps for a ride" where they will pick up the traps and move them to a new spot where the owner can't find them. All because they think someone is fishing in their "turf". As if it is possible own a piece of ocean! It is a nasty business.

Of course, in my book, best course of action if one of these guys gets on you is to just play it cool and avoid confrontation. Never start an argument with a crazy person.

Okay, end of rant. Back to work.

I hate to say it but my experience has been lobstermen are generally a-holes. In addition to having a lobster boat drive right over me in 10' of water once they have total disregard for right of way rules on the surface in their boats. I am a boat owner and have had to deal with their version of right of way. They think they own the ocean because they work there. I have never, and have never known any diver, to take a lobster from a trap. Their attitude really does not make sense to me. If they threatened/pissed us off enough we could easily return at night and empty and destroy every single trap they own. I would not do that but the fact that we can would seem to dictate that maybe it's better to have a different approach toward divers.

--Matt

 

[RIOceanographer]

Had the same problem on a shore dive, when we returned from the dive the lobster man was waiting for us on shore but he did not say a word when we had empty hands. We told him we had seen pots with lobster in and a holding pen with about 40 lobster in, he then GAVE us a couple of lobster and drove us and our gear up the track about 500 yards and 150' to the top. We gave him our phone # and told him if he ever needed a diver give us a call.

Well that story is a bit refreshing. You don't usually hear about such nice endings to these kinds of encounters.

Though my cynical side does wonder how he might have reacted if you had some lobsters you caught legally.

 

[RIOceanographer]

I hate to say it but my experience has been lobstermen are generally a-holes. In addition to having a lobster boat drive right over me in 10' of water once they have total disregard for right of way rules on the surface in their boats. I am a boat owner and have had to deal with their version of right of way. They think they own the ocean because they work there. I have never, and have never known any diver, to take a lobster from a trap. Their attitude really does not make sense to me. If they threatened/pissed us off enough we could easily return at night and empty and destroy every single trap they own. I would not do that but the fact that we can would seem to dictate that maybe it's better to have a different approach toward divers.

--Matt

I will say this for the guy today, he very delibrately stayed just outside the 50ft legal radius of our dive flag. He was not reckless enough to endanger us directly like the guy that buzzed you. He deserves that much credit.

I know some of the lobsterman are nice guys, problem is they are not the ones divers tend to have encounters with. By definition the nice ones are the ones that leave us alone.

But I agree with you, they would do a lot better to make friends with the divers than to threaten/endander us. Most things in life are like that. Smiles often work better than threats.

 

[yak]

You guys are lucky you have a legal 50 foot radius. Here in MA, they have to "avoid a dive flag, and proceed at no-wake speed". There's no teeth to the law.

I still like the idea of red pepper spray. "Tag and release"

 

[Spectre]

I have never, and have never known any diver, to take a lobster from a trap.

I've seen it. The full story is here. But basically we were salvaging our traps after a storm, and had to cut away a few that got hopelessly wrapped around the wreck. My friend moved a couple of the ones he was working on further off the wreck and sent me back down to get them. I saw bubbles right on the trap and knew something was up.

Sure enough, caught the dude with his hand in the cookie jar. I was going to approach him underwater, and thankfully he swam away before I had a chance; since I didn't actually -see- the speargun that he had until we confronted him as he climbed on the boat.

His 'excuse' was that he was rescuing lobsters from a ghost trap. I asked him how many ghost traps have bait in them...

We use zip ties to 'lock' our traps, and it's not rare to pull up a trap without a zip tie.

 

[Spectre]

You guys are lucky you have a legal 50 foot radius. Here in MA, they have to "avoid a dive flag, and proceed at no-wake speed". There's no teeth to the law.

You'd be surprised sometimes. We were running a search for a lost sidescan towfish right off Misery Island outside Beverly harbor, pretty much right on the edge of the channel into the harbor. We had a search grid setup with flags at the corners and flags on the ends of the transect lines... about a football sized 'field'. As we were setting it up, I guess there were people complaining to the harbor master. The harbor patrol came out and basically asked us what the f**k we thought we were doing. We explained, he understood...

... and proceeded to hang out near us and I personally watched him pull over and ticket a dozen boats in a half hour that came screaming by our flags.

 

[ScubaSarus]

A group of us dove out to the dumplings from the pier near Bull Point. A lobsterman pulled right up to us and accused divers of raiding his traps. He told us he had spent time in jail for running over a diver already. We explained to him we were not taking lobster. This may be the same guy. What a coincidence.

Chris

 

[RIOceanographer]

A group of us dove out to the dumplings from the pier near Bull Point. A lobsterman pulled right up to us and accused divers of raiding his traps. He told us he had spent time in jail for running over a diver already. We explained to him we were not taking lobster. This may be the same guy. What a coincidence.

Chris

THe dumplings from the DEM pier south of Bull Pt? Wow, that is a bit of a swim!

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was the same guy. That is pretty close, and given how territorial the lobsterman are, it would certainly make sense.