November 14, 2016 — WOODS HOLE, Mass. — More and more whales are becoming snarled in fishing gear, often dying slow, painful deaths.
Two Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) engineers have invented a lobster trap device that they say could help whales avert entanglements and, at the same time, might allow currently restricted waters to be safely reopened for lobster fishing.
In New England’s offshore lobster fishery, long vertical ropes or “lines” connect the traps on the bottom to floats on the water’s surface, so fishermen can locate their trawls and drag them back up.
The new device is called the “on-call” buoy and floats near the bottom attached to lobster traps.