Thursday, June 12, 2008
Warm Weather, Slow Catch, and Sunburns
Captain Brendan Ready
Captain Brendan Ready
Catch a Piece of Maine
Another perfect Maine weekend brought warm temperatures and lots of sun for all us to here along the coast of Maine. The warm temperatures help heat up the waters of the coastal harbors and bays. This increase in water temperature is a warm welcome to millions of lobsters that have been migrating from offshore waters back into the shallow and protected "molting" grounds.
Each year around this time lobsters will travel into the warmest waters where they will "shed" and grow into another larger shell. This is the transformation of a "hard-shell" lobster into a "shedder" or soft shell lobster. During the molting process, the lobsters are extremely vulnerable to predators because their shell is so soft. Right now the catch is very low because most lobsters are in the process of molting and we will not catch them for a month or so. All of us here are checking our traps once to twice per week. If we catch one legal lobster per trap per week, we are happy right now. With the nice weather this past weekend, Johnny and I had the chance to take the Catch a Piece of Maine boat over to Richmond Island, off of Cape Elizabeth for a cruise.
We didn't catch many lobsters this past week, but I can assure you that we caught quite a sunburn over the weekend!
Posted on Thursday, June 12, 2008 in Permalink
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