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News and Media

News and Media

By Founder and President Kurt Lieber

With the official opening of the commercial lobster fishery earlier this month, our coastal waters are being inundated with roughly 150,000 active lobster traps. This is just the commercial traps…who knows how many recreational traps have been set as well.

We don’t attempt to remove abandoned traps during this legal fishery period. That said, we can remove the traps that wash up on the beaches. Thankfully, we have a Debris Report Form on our website that allows people to report sightings of man-made to us such as abandoned fishing gear like nets, lines, ropes, and traps.

Pile of misc derelict fishing gear
ODA volunteer Crew with pile of abandoned nets
Recreational fishing line that was found floating in the ocean.

Just last year, we removed 15 traps from a beach in Santa Barbara that some University of California Santa Barbara students reported to us. The cool part was that they actually helped us haul them off the beach and up a grueling climb up a bluff!

UCSB students help ODA haul out 15 lobster traps.

Last week, someone let us know about two traps she had seen on a small stretch of beach in Malibu. Her name is Erika, and she sent us the report on October 14th. She included a screen shot of a map which gave us the exact location. Great work, Erika!

So, I loaded up my truck with some tools and a hand cart and headed down the coast to beautiful Malibu. I drove down Malibu Canyon Road, which I had never seen before. Oh my word, what a special place! I wanted to stop and go for a hike, but I kept my focus on those traps.

Lobster traps on Malibue beach, must be removed.

When I got to the site, there was a group of people sitting on the beach, with about a dozen kids running around and playing in the sand. These kids were probably 3 to 4 years old, and they were playing right near one of the traps.  Knowing that the traps rust over time and can have some really nasty barbs poking out from them, I wanted to rush to get those traps out of harm’s way.

I grabbed the hand cart and made my way down the stairs to the beach. I got the first one out, the one that was closest to the kids, post haste.

After hauling it back up the stairs, I headed to the second one. As I got that one up the stairs and was loading the two traps onto my truck a guy who lived right near there said that there was another trap about 100 yards away from the others.

So, I headed back to look for that one, which I found with no problem. 

Crew with Catch of the Day

Each one of these traps had the proper identification tags on them, which are administered by the Department of Fish and Wildlife. And all of them were from the 2024 season which means that they had only been in the water for a few weeks. 

I called my contact at the Department of Fish and Wildlife and told him where I found them and shared the trap identification numbers. He’s going to contact the fishermen who own the traps and have them contact me if they want them back. 

First and foremost, we’re glad the traps came out of the ocean on their own volition (i.e., with the force of the waves), and it’s nice to know that those traps won’t be an eyesore for beach goers and a hazard for those little tikes!

Thanks again for the report, Erika, and please let us know if any of you see these traps when you spend time at the beach in the future.

Have you seen any ghost gear such as nets, lines, or traps? Please let us know on our Debris Report Form. Thank you!