Bugs, busts & traps.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) will let the number of spiny lobster traps in Florida waters decrease by a method of passive reduction. In a draft rule amendment in December, the FWC proposed to end a five-year moratorium on the reduction of traps this coming July, as previously scheduled, which will effectively cut trap numbers from the current 490,000 down to a target of 400,000 in coming years. Traps numbered an all-time high of approximately 940,000 in '93, when the current reduction program began.

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"The passive reduction," says a spokesperson for the FWC, "requires that a commercial lobsterman who wants to sell his trap licenses to another fisherman must take 10 percent of those traps off the market. If they're sold to someone within the fisherman's family, then they can keep 100 percent. This way, the use of a trap is not taken from anyone."

Meanwhile, the FWC's law enforcement division continues its effort against lobster poachers and thieves. In the last five months of '08 alone, FWC officers confiscated nearly 8,000 ill-gotten lobster tails in only five busts.

This year the FWC will examine the pressures of commercial and also, possibly, of recreational diving on lobster stocks. Another issue that may arise for discussion is the use of casitas--manmade lobster habitats placed in waters to attract lobster, a practice which is currently illegal. However, some people say that casitas do less damage to the lobster stocks than the current practice of trapping, which can damage sensitive sea floor and legally uses immature lobsters to bait keeper bugs.

"As far as the lobster population here in Florida," says John Hunt, Program Administrator at the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in Marathon and a research biologist specializing in lobster, "our best measure is the fluctuation of harvests, and lobster harvest has been low since 2001. The recreational harvest has been low, the commercial harvest has been low, and the ratio between the recreational and the commercial harvests has stayed the same. I think the lobsters are less abundant now than they were in the '90s."

The recreational sector takes about 25 percent of the overall lobster catch annually, and the commercial sector takes about 75 percent, says Hunt.

"As for the reasons for the lower populations," says Hunt, "it could be the virus in young lobsters that was first discovered in '98, or there could be changes in the environment, in habitat, or in recruitment. We're studying all these."