Some Sound News

Some people who have boats in Greenwich don't like ospreys nesting near them. I would have liked this story better if it had included some reaction from Audubon Greenwich or Audubon Connecticut.

Fresh from the winning referendum on whether Stratford should sell Long Beach West to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the city (or is it a town?) signed a deal with the Trust for Public Land to serve as intermediary. This story doesn't say how much TPL will make on the deal though.

And some people in Connecticut want to keep the lobster v-notch program going, here and here.

The V-Notch Program is Protecting the Sound's Female Lobsters

How well is the v-notch program to help restore Long Island Sound's lobster population working, you ask? (Actually, I asked, here.) Pretty well, it seems.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has planned to increase the size of lobsters that can be taken legally, by 1-16th of an inch, starting August 1. But because the v-notch program has been more effective than thought, the commission postponed the increase, according to this report:

A program aimed at restoring the lobster population in Long Island Sound is working well enough to keep the current minimum legal size for lobsters taken by fishermen, environmental protection officials said Monday.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission had planned to increase the current size by 1/16 of an inch on Aug. 1. But that will be held off for at least one year because of the V-notch program, where the tails of mature female lobsters have a "v" cut into them before they're released back into the water.

The mark protects them from harvest for about two years, giving them time to grow and reproduce.

Fishermen from Connecticut and New York returned the equivalent of more than 58,000 mature female lobsters between December 2007 and July 2008. That's more than 100 percent of the goal established for the first year of the program.

Is Anyone Catching Lobsters With Notches In Their Tails?

I have questions about the v-notch program, the life-support system for Long Island Sound lobsters that itself is on life support.

Under the program, when lobstermen catch female lobsters, they cut a v-shaped notch in the tail, throw the lobster back, and turn in the notch to collect a $3.75 payment. If they catch a lobster with a v-notch already cut in its tail, it can't be sold and they are required by law to throw it back, thus giving the lobster extra time to lay eggs.

For this program to mean anything, lobstermen have to be catching lobsters with notches. If they're not catching them, then it doesn't make sense to go through the expense and effort of notching them -- because they're not being caught anyway.

So my questions are: Are lobstermen catching and releasing lobsters with notches in their tail? And are they and the government regulators overseeing the project keeping track of this?

This otherwise worthwhile story about the program and its problems, in the Stamford Times, doesn't raise those questions, and neither do any of the other stories I've read about it.

Connecticut Fails to Continue Lobster V-Notch Program for Long Island Sound

I once asked a Connecticut DEP official if the fish ladders he was working on really worked, which prompted him to sneer sarcastically something like, "No, we're doing it because it doesn't work," which prompted me to remark that it's not exactly unknown in the history of government for money to be poured into projects that don't work.

Which brings me to Connecticut's relatively new v-notch program. As a way to try to increase the breeding stock of lobsters in Long Island Sound, the state pays lobstermen to cut a notch in the tale of females and then throw the females back. If they subsequently catch a female with a notch in her tale, it is illegal to keep it. That gives the females extra time to lay eggs.

I have no idea if the program is effective or not. Presumably the Connecticut State Legislature doesn't really know either. Nevertheless they decided the $1.1 million it costs was too expensive and failed to fund it this year. Here's the Times report.

Survival Tactics tor High School Lobstermen

The high school kids who are being trained to help lobstermen with the v-notch program (which, let's face it, amounts to a public subsidy of the lobster industry) are also being trained to survive if the lobster boat they're on happens to be sinking, here.