Shift Work

Just like Kenny Chesney sings with his deep, dreamy drawl in his country hit, "shift work is hard work." Except I'm not referring to shifts at a convenience store. I'm talking about the hard work of shifting lobster traps. While winter fishing has many disadvantages, hauling traps in the summer involves lots of shifting. Hauling singles would almost be enjoyable on a lovely summer's day if it wasn't for shifting. It is a logistical fact of lobstering that every captain and sternman dread, but a necessary evil nonetheless.

Sometimes we shift traps because an area is over-crowded with gear. When the density of traps becomes too high, other fithermens' lines start tangling with ours and it takes up our precious time to untangle them. When it is too stressful for Cap to stay in a locality, we shift elsewhere, where the buoys are sparser.

The other condition for shifting traps is when we aren't catching any lobsters in a location. There is quite a bit of strategizing that goes into trap placement in order to maximize one's catch. It is a guessing game that every captain plays. A guess educated by many years of experience. But regardless of the number of years a captain has been fishing, it is a gamble. Every year is different in terms of the migration patterns of lobsters (both temporally and geographically). No one knows for sure where they are going to to catch the unpredictable crustaceans until a few hauls later.

So we roll the dice and try again.