‘Bug’ Hunters Claw Through S.D. Waters

To your list of favorite excuses (“The sun was in my eyes,” “I didn’t notice how fast I was going, officer,”) add the one that a bunch of disappointed lobstermen were passing around Wednesday, the first--and typically best--day of the new lobster season.

It was a full moon.

As lore has it, lobsters don’t like the full moon. The bright light beaming through the sea makes the bottom crawlers an easy mark for predators. Lobsters tend to stay put under ledges and in bottom crevices during a full moon, ignoring luscious cod-heads tempting them from thousands of nearby traps.

Or so they say.

“They don’t like to walk in the full moon,” said Jeffrey Cox, an Imperial Beach resident who has made his livelihood as a fisherman for 13 years. “They’re like cockroaches. (Divers frequently refer to lobsters as “bugs.”) You know how when you turn the light on in the kitchen, the cockroaches split? They’re just like the cockroaches.”

Hampered by Full Moon, Strong Surf and Fog

As a line of wet, grimy lobstermen trickled into the Lovelock Street commissary of Anthony’s Fish Grotto Wednesday, inexperienced, small-time fishermen seemed to be getting the worst of the full moon, strong surf and fog that complicated what is traditionally the best day of each new lobster season.

“It’s tougher than construction,” said Chuck Trent, who with partner Bob Stone captured just 76 pounds of lobster in their first-ever day on the seas. Stone got sick twice. Trent was bone-weary and frustrated from throwing back 15 undersized lobsters for each legal-sized one he was allowed to keep under state law.

(Lobsters must be 3 inches from the horns on their heads to the end of the hard shell that covers their abdomen. Wardens from the state Department of Fish and Game spot-check the catch, issuing citations to people in possession of lobsters that are undersize.)

“I hate the sea. I get seasick,” said Trent, who was on the water from 4:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“You’ve got to hack all the seaweed (from lines to the traps) and then you’re hoping there’s something in your trap you can use. I had traps with 15 lobsters in them and I had to throw ‘em all back. There is no plus side,” Trent said.

Nevertheless, Craig Ghio, who runs Ghio’s Seafood Products and claims to be the No. 1 buyer of lobster in San Diego, is hoping to bring in 125,000 pounds before the season ends March 30.

“Last year, a lot of lobsters were just a hair undersize,” Ghio said. With a year to mature, that should mean “that this coming year should be real solid season.”

Experienced, large-scale lobstermen were faring better. Lauro Saraspe brought in 660 pounds of lobster from 400 traps, and his son, Andy, collected 578 pounds, Ghio reported.

For divers, the first Wednesday in October is more of a celebration than an invitation to cash in on tasty crustaceans. Despite rough surf that made for “poor, hazardous diving conditions,” according to the Mission Bay Harbor Patrol, wet-suit-clad divers were in the water one minute after midnight, searching the bottom with high-powered flashlights for anything large enough to bring to the surface legally.

After sorting through about 50 lobsters, Scott Sundby and three friends brought home just two legal-sized crustaceans, though they saw dozens in traps all over the ocean floor.

No matter. The 18-year-old Sundby planned to be 60 feet beneath the surf off Point Loma again tonight and will spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday diving for lobster off San Clemente.

“I don’t even eat lobster,” Sundby said. “I don’t eat any fish. I go out with my friends to have a good time, and I give the lobster to them. I get a free boat ride. . . . Everybody says I’m weird.”