For Most Mainland Trappers, Poachers Are an Unavoidable Nuisance

Every time Andy Volaski hauls an empty trap from the water, he checks to determine whether he has been the victim of bad luck or poachers.

Every year, trappers lose an unknown number of lobsters to scuba divers who are too lazy, cheap or unskilled to find them on their own. Instead of hunting for lobsters in the caves and crevasses where they dwell, poachers simply follow tether lines to lobster traps, break the hatches and empty the contents.

On a recent outing, more than a dozen of Volaski’s wire traps came up empty with bent trap doors and missing fasteners--telltale signs that poachers had beaten him to his catch.

“We’ve got a lot of guys making a living off me this year,” Volaski said. “Everybody takes a piece of you.”

Fishermen have to schedule their retrievals just right, he said.

“The longer you let the traps soak, the better you do,” Volaski said. “If you let them soak too long, you get robbed.”

Some trappers are reluctant to report poaching, because they fear divers will retaliate by cutting their traps free of their buoys. At $75 a trap, that can get expensive.

Most trappers have come to accept a certain amount of losses as just another part of doing business.

“It’s just something you’ve got to live with,” Volaski said. “I’m not going to kill somebody, but you feel like it. I need Fish and Game to come do something about it.”

On a recent weekend, Volaski worked with state Department of Fish and Game workers to try to nab poachers in one of the department’s periodic sting operations. Officials use dyes or tools to secretly mark a number of lobsters and place them into Volaski’s traps before they are lowered.

Officials then watch the shore to spot divers emerging from the surf carrying lobsters. If any of those lobsters have the secret markings, the diver gets cited for poaching, a misdemeanor that carries penalties of up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine.

There are many reasons for poaching. Some people just like a free meal, and others lack the skill to catch more than one lobster by hand.

“The minute he grabs one of them, the rest are gone,” Volaski said.

Poachers also include the occasional environmentalist acting as a lobster freedom fighter, who liberates the critters from their underwater cages.

As with most crimes, poaching is a matter of access and opportunity, said Kristine Barsky, a senior marine biologist with Fish and Game.

Lobsters can live several miles out as long as they have a food supply, relatively warm water and good hiding places. But diving poachers prefer the easy access of the traps closer to shore.

“The people who fish the mainland get hit frequently harder,” Barsky said.

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The California Lobster and Trap Fishermen’s Assn. monitors poaching incidents and tries to get state laws enforced to protect its members, said Jim Colomy, the group’s local representative.

“It frustrates us to no end,” he said. The poachers, he added, “don’t see it as stealing.”

Others, such as John Guth, association president, blame the expansion of no-fishing zones for aiding poachers.

“We have a lot of closed areas that we have to abide by now,” Guth said.

“Every time they take a little more, it just shoves more guys in the existing area. It just creates a haven for poachers.”