Thousands of abandoned lobster traps have silently littered Long Island Sound for decades. Now, a local effort to locate them all has received a significant boost.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded $1.8 million to the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Suffolk County for marine debris clean-up in the Sound. Part of that funding will go to the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk for their efforts to locate and recycle lobster traps.
WSHU's Sabrina Garone spoke with Justin Susarchick, who leads the initiative.
WSHU: Could you explain the environmental damage of marine debris?
JS: Our team here at the Maritime Aquarium is focused on an initiative called the Lobster Trap Recovery and Assessment Partnership, or LTRAP for short. This is a coalition focused on removing lost and abandoned lobster traps from Long Island Sound. It's a coalition of partners around the Sound, including the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, Save the Sound, Project Oceanology, and commercial lobstermen. When we discuss the work being done at LTRAP in relation to marine debris mitigation, our goal is to remove as many lobster traps from the sound as possible and sustainably recycle them. It's a real critical problem because these traps, once they're lost, can still continue to fish long after the lobstermen or fishermen have moved on. And so, this presents a problem, known as "ghost fishing", where animals can enter these traps, be captured and killed, and it's a chronic, constant cycle where animals continue to enter these traps. That signals a long-term, consistent, potential loss to all sorts of different, diverse wildlife in Long Island Sound.
WSHU: Is there like a particular species you guys are really worried about when it comes to the traps? I know Maritime was part of that study on declining horseshoe crab numbers. Is it mostly animals like those that dwell on the ocean floor, or do the traps not discriminate?
JS: It's a diverse array of different animals. We've conducted a biological survey on the recovered lobster traps that we have found between 2022 and the present. Over the last three years, we've pulled up 3,200 lost or abandoned lobster traps, and we've identified 36,000 individual animals. Key animals at risk include a number of different fish — tautog, black sea bass, American lobster and whelk snails. Those are at a greater risk of ghost fishing once they enter those traps, but we're seeing numerous different animals come and go in these traps.
WSHU: What's the history there with the traps? Were there restrictions put in place at a certain point, and that's why they've all been abandoned?
JS: There are lobstermen out in the Sound working, but it's a pretty small industry compared to what it was at its peak in the 1990s. At one time, Long Island Sound harbored a $12 million annual lobster fishery. And this came to a halt in 1999 due to a mass die-off of lobster, due to a combination of factors, including climate change, warming water, pollution, pesticide pollution, and disease. We've never really seen the population recover.
In the years following that industry collapse, many hundreds of lobstermen sold their boats, got out of the industry, and, in the wake of that chaos, a lot of traps were simply lost. And so, we suspect that there are tens of thousands of lost or abandoned traps out in the water that are still potentially functional today.
WSHU: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like we've seen other kinds of shellfish make a comeback in Connecticut waters. Why has the lobster taken so long to return to this area?
JS: In terms of American lobster in the Sound, it's just simply getting too warm for them. There are a few pocket areas that harbor American lobsters in the sound, but today it seems that the current state of Long Island Sound is becoming increasingly inhospitable to maintaining a larger American lobster population, largely due to water temperature alone.
WSHU: What's the process of locating and recovering these traps?
JS: When we plan to go out on the water to recover lobster traps, we'll work hand in hand with a member of the commercial fishing industry. It's incredibly important that we have these members of the commercial lobster industry as not just stakeholders, but really active participants in the program. So we will join them, go aboard their vessels, and they're providing us with their knowledge and their background history of where lobster traps were put down historically. They'll bring us out to areas where they suspect traps have been lingering along the sea floor. We will throw out this specialized grapple system — basically, just a rope with 10 grapples attached to the end of it. We'll begin a toe where we put that grapple system out in the water, and eventually when we feel a snag, we pull that back up.
WSHU: You guys have been doing this for a while, right? But the grant is new. So, how will the grant improve that process?
JS: We're so excited about this award because what it's going to allow us to do is basically continue our operations between now and out until 2029. We're going to be able to run more trips —120 recovery trips in 2027, followed by an additional 135 recovery trips out in Long Island Sound, both in 2028 and 2029. The time we spend out there, trawling in new areas, searching previously unexplored areas, and helping to maximize our ability to search for these traps, is invaluable.
WSHU: How does this conservation project fit into that overall goal for the Maritime Aquarium of becoming more community-centric?
JS: This really ties the maritime history to the actionable marine debris mitigation work we're currently doing. Because we're bringing in those lobstermen — these are folks who are from the community, they're working and living along our shoreline, and for them, fishing is not just a livelihood, it's not just a job, it's a way of life. Having these folks be partnered with the program is really one way that we're connecting with the community, and then, along with our other conservation work that we're doing, we're always trying to bring what we're learning out through these, conservation projects back into the walls of our aquarium, integrate it into our exhibits, build out our educational programs to help inform our guests to the work we're doing, and then get them inspired how they can also assist and where they can lend a hand and make a difference, as well.
