Lobster Pots

[Maryanne]Maine and the whole NE of the USA is famous for its Lobster pots – we read early on in a guidebook, that there are places you feel you can walk across the water stepping from pot buoy to pot buoy (we have come close). For this reason we have deliberately NOT entered any harbor at night, and made sure in any fog we have a good look out. We learned that as a pot floats become detached and drift ashore, you are not allowed to remove it from the shore – all you can do is “advertise it” for the owner to come and collect – so all over the NE there are racks of lobster pot floats

The patterns on the pots are registered with the state, and each lobsterman has his own – these range from solid colors, rings, stripes, even large polka dots. Each pot buoy has its owners color scheme and the owner carries a sample on his lobster boat in clear view – so you can have fun guessing which way the lobster boat may go through a field of floats. What has amazed us most, is that we find fields of buoys in the middle of really deep channels (200’+). We are careful to avoid them and if we are unsure, throw our engine into neutral if motoring. Most floats seem to be made from a Styrofoam like material (painted) but we see others that look like inflatable fenders. Some are in such deep water that extra flotation is added (either on a separate, but attached piece of rope, or threaded onto a single wooden pole like a stack of doughnuts. Each day we are amused by some new combination of color or shape!

[Kyle]After spending so much time in Chesapeake Bay, I still have to think to call them lobster pots and not crab pots!