According to Trevor Corson's blog, Massachusetts lobstermen are experimenting with using baskets of oysters to weight down their traps, instead of the bricks they usually use. In overworked corporate parlance, this is a great example of "synergy".
"Heaviness is what you need for a lobster trap to sink to the bottom of the sea and stay there," says Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters and The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice. "When I worked as a lobsterboat crewman in Maine, numerous winter days were spent outfitting new traps with heavy bricks."
But bricks are not the only things that are heavy. The Massachusetts lobstermen are part of a pilot study in which they are replacing bricks with baskets of oysters, which will grow bigger while their weight helps keep the trap sitting on the bottom. Later, the lobstermen can harvest and sell the big oysters they’ve grown, along with the lobsters they’ve been catching.
If this works, I can see a past generation of lobstermen thumping their foreheads in "I coulda had a V8" fashion at the gorgeous simplicity of this idea. In addition to providing a new revenue stream, filter-feeding mollusks like oysters, mussels, and clams do double duty by helping to clean up the oceans.
The success of this strategy is by no means guaranteed:
"It partly depends how well the lobsters and the oysters get along in the trap," Corson says. 'Initial reports are that the lobsters are a little less inclined to walk inside."
But it demonstrates a way of thinking that has grown all too uncommon. I wish the lobstermen, the lobsters, and the mollusks the best of luck in their collaboration.
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