By Founder and President Kurt Lieber

Because the commercial and recreational lobster fishing season is underway as of the first week of October, there are approximately 150,000 lobster traps up and down the coast of California. Their buoys can be see from Santa Barbara all the way south to San Diego, and around all the islands in between.

I actually saw these trap buoys -- from the air -- when a nonprofit called Lighthawk took me for a reconnaissance flight a couple of weeks ago. I do this annually to mark the sites of lobster traps and share the data with government agencies and universities.

You can see the line of buoys which have a rope line attached to their trap which sits on the ocean floor below. You can click on the image to make it larger; it will be easier to see the markers.

Most of these traps are set in water no deeper than 150 feet since lobsters hang out in the shallower waters where there are rocky reefs in which they can hide and eat.

But because the traps are so close to shore, when storms come in and create big waves and strong currents, the traps don’t stay in that one position where they were originally placed.

True to form, during the last week of October we had a storm blow in that created 8-to-12-foot waves. Those waves moved a lot of those traps far from their known locations. Some even got washed up on the beach.

Luckily ODA has the ability to go to a lot of the beaches along the California coast and remove the traps. But we need people to let us know where and when they see them.

In October we got a report from a supporter named Erika and we retrieved those traps which were on a Malibu beach. We recently received another report from a lady named Marlene about traps that she had seen washed up on a beach in Ventura.

I quickly called her to get more details about where they were, and how many.  As soon as I hung up with her, I called long-time ODA volunteer Kim Cardenas to see if she could help me remove them.  She didn’t hesitate, and we met at a place called Marina Park the next day.

After a short search of the area, we saw three traps that someone had pulled up from the sand and placed on a path. As Kim and I approached the traps we saw another one on the beach. When we checked that one out, we saw another one about 100 feet away. Unfortunately, this one was not going to be easy to pull. It had been on the beach, in the tidal area, and was just stuffed to the gills with sand…

We tried with all our might to tip the trap up so we could shake the sand out of it, but we were no match for what I estimated was 300 pounds of sand.

After a few minutes of trying to dig it out with our hands, Kim drove back to her house and got a shovel.  That proved to be the key to success, although it took us an hour-and-a-half to get that one trap out!

We then hauled the traps back to the parking lot, one at a time, and posed them for this picture.

I want to thank Marlene for reaching out to us and talking us through their exact location.

In fact, when I went on that Lighthawk flight, part of our purpose was to check-out another Debris Report that was reported to us by a supporter named David. He had seen a giant deposit of net (the size of a Volkswagen Beetle) on a Catalina Beach. Unfortunately, we didn't see it. It must have been washed back out to sea. I hope we can get it another day! We've done a lot of work in Southern California waters over the years, removing almost 40,000 pounds (20 tons) of nets over the years.

I'd like to thank Lighthawk and Captain John for this amazing opportunity to survey our oceans for man-made debris.

Also, thank you to Kim for giving up five hours of your day to haul these ornery traps up and out.

There are going to be more storms coming up, it is winter after all. Please let us know if you see any abandoned traps on your walks on the beaches. Even though it might not look like they are killing any animals right now, the big waves can actually wash those traps back out to sea where they can start killing again, or injuring people who go into the water and do not see them. 

Keep those reports coming! Visit our Debris Report Form.