Trap Shackin'

Trap shacking is a coastal activity akin in degree of integrity and intellegence to the agrarian past time of cow tipping. In other words, it's just downright stupid and obnoxious.

The other day we encountered a unique snarl that seemed somehow familiar. The tailer line was wrapped around the trap and all bolluxed up. It took a while to sort it out.

"How did that happen?" I asked because I was concerned that perhaps it was something that I had done, maybe the way I set the trap, and wanted to know how to prevent it from happening again.

His reply was unexpected: "Well, you've seen it before, so you might as well know. . ."

Turned out that someone had hauled his traps and then just set them one on top of another in a heap, instead of carefully spacing them.

I'm aware that Cap tries to protect me from some of the ugly truths of lobstering. The dirty local politics. The stealing and resentments. However, it's a reality of the business. I don't need to know names, but I appreciate him letting me know what's going on.

"Shacking" traps means hauling them and stealing the lobsters. I wrote about this before in the case of shrimp traps in "Ghosts Up Above," but it's more common with lobster traps, since lobsters are more valuable. Some people will go to desperate measures to steal. If the trap door is fool-proof, they will find some other way of breaking into it. Cap said that for a while someone was even popping vents so that they could reach in the hole with the vent gone and remove the precious plunder. He had to start drilling a hole in the top of the vent that snaps into the wire mesh and secure the top with a rusty hogring in addition to the two usual bottom corners.

When it gets to that point, you wonder if they are doing it for the purpose of making a few extra dollars or if they are just trying to prove that they can break into the trap. Like a thief who prides himself on cracking safes. In any case, it is a dishonest and disrespectful thing to do to someone else's hard-earned property. An activity that can only be rivaled by trap cutting, which is just plain nasty. But enough of my bitching. Let's move on to more pleasant topics. . .