Red Lobster presents, Seafood with Standards, Gear Marking
My name is Curt Brown, I'm a Lobsterman and a marine biologist at Ready Seafood up here in Maine
and we're proud to supply Red Lobster with nothing but sustainable lobster.
Lobstering here is Maine is about so much more than just catching lobsters.
It's about protecting all the marine life we have around us, and we do that in a number of different ways
starting with our marker buoys.
Everybody has their own colours. My buoy colours are brown and green, and I decided on those colours when I was a kid
because those were the two paint colours in my parents garage.
Below the buoy we have what's called a 'weak link', this weak link right here is designed to breakaway
should any marine life get tangled in our end-lines.
Beyond that we have a purple marker rope, and another another purple gear marking right at the trap.
This purple rope here signifies that this line is from Maine, should the trap ever get lost.
The only way you can legally harvest the lobster in Maine is with traps, so let's haul this one up I'll show you
the rest of what we do to protect marine life here in Maine.
Every single trap in Maine is required to to have a trap tag.
This ensures that nobody fishes over the legal limit, so that there's never too much gear in the water.
On the trap itself we have what's called an escape vent, this vent right here is essentially
a hole in the trap that allows small lobsters and any other marine life that gets into the trap to get back out.
The state of Maine is also working on ropeless gear technology so that someday we might be able to fish these traps with no rope at all.
There has not been a documented Right Whale entanglement with Maine Lobster gear in over 15 years
and that is the result of all that you see right here.
Thank you Red Lobster, that's something that we're very, very proud of.
Honest to Good Seafood
To learn more, visit Redlobster.com/SeafoodWithStandards