Lobster wars: Man drowns, NFL legend attacked in ‘insane frenzy’ of Florida lobster hunt

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Photo source: nydailynews.com

The spiny lobsters sit unsuspecting, neatly nestled into the cracks and crevices on the ocean floor that they call home. Meanwhile, the Florida coast just feet away buzzes with anticipation.

For weeks, its hotels have been booked solid. Boats have been waxed, and diving equipment has been cleaned and checked.

It’s this way every year at the beginning of Florida’s annual lobster mini-season, a two-day window (also called “sport season”) for hunting spiny lobster, held on the last consecutive Wednesday and Thursday of July. It was created in 1974 to ease tensions between recreational lobster hunters and commercial lobstermen, who can set traps on Aug. 1, according to The News-Press.

Divers aren’t hunting the smooth-backed Maine lobsters you might find lazily wandering around a tank at a seafood shop, though. These bug-like crustaceans, which can grow several feet long, sport long antennae and, as their name suggests, are covered in small bumps or spines.

This year’s season began Wednesday and ends at midnight Friday.

Sadly, each year brings with it a number of deaths and injuries, as the waters crowd with boats and eager, hungry divers.

This year, 60-year-old William Simko died after he “reportedly become distressed” while scuba diving in about 12 feet of water, looking for lobsters.

Immediately, his son and four others dove in after him and pulled him into the boat to perform CPR. A Navy helicopter responded to their calls for help, and brought Simko to the Lower Keys Hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival, the Miami Herald reported.

Meanwhile Warren Sapp, an NFL hall of fame member who played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, received a much more mild injury but one that is emblematic of the inherent dangers in lobstering — he was bitten by a shark.

There are many ways to catch a lobster, but first you have to find them. They hide in crevices along the ocean’s floor, so divers swim down looking for them. In Sapp’s case, he was nine feet deep.

Once there, hunters generally used a “tickle stick” to force the creature out of hiding — it’s essentially a metal prod that you slide under the lobster’s tail in an attempt to nudge it out of the hole. Then, you try to nab one in a net — which is difficult to do, as they shoot backwards in the water and are a bit quicker than one might think.

Sapp took a more brazen approach to his lobstering, sticking his hand directly in a lobster hole, when a nearby, about four-foot-long nurse shark noticed him.

Presumably hungry, the shark went for the same lobster Sapp did.

“I was sticking my hand in a hole and a monster locked on me,” Sapp told the Tampa Bay Times. “You’ve got to be careful sticking your hand in some holes down here.

Added Sapp, “He lit me up.”

In the end, the shark took a small, bloody chunk of Sapp’s arm, but the former linebacker got the lobster. And many, many more.

“We bandaged it up, put some gauze on there, some black electrical tape and hit a couple more spots, then headed in,” captain Jack Carlson, who led Sapp’s charter, told the Tampa Bay Times.

Unfortunate as these events are, they’re not unusual.

A 2003 North Carolina State University study found that the average boat density along coral patch reefs during the mini-season to be more than 900 times higher than during the normal season — it also found a 95 percent decline in lobster density in just those two days. It’s estimated that nearly 60,000 divers are out on the waters this season, according to Florida Keys News.

When you get that many people together on water, competing over a precious resource — in this case, lobster — things are bound to get dicey.

“It’s usually insane, a frenzy if you will, especially in certain areas where lobsters are plentiful in the Keys and there are a lot of boaters,” Bobby Dube, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman for the Keys, told the Miami Herald.

Some years are worse than others, of course. In 2006, five divers lost their lives, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

And it’s not just accidents. Some divers get a little territorial and, like a cornered lobster, they tend to lash out. Only, these divers seem to use whatever they have on their boats as a weapon.

Here’s a brief list of things that have occurred during lobster mini-season:

– A diver shooting another with a spear gun over a lobster hole.

– A diver shooting another with a flare gun over a lobster hole.

– Divers throwing rocks at each other over, you guessed it, a lobster hole.

– Divers having boat-to-boat fistfights over, wait for it, a lobster hole.

– Divers run over by boats while in the water.

It’s gotten so bad that many have called for an end to the mini-season. A Facebook page titled “Florida Lobster Mini-Season Must End” recounts many of the incidents each year. Another, with more than 3,500 members, is called “Cancel Lobster Mini Season.”

An online petition to put an end to the season has amassed more than 1,700 signatures.

“Mini-season is just too much of a zoo,” Bob Beville, vice president of sales for Waterman Broadcasting and lobster hunter, told the News-Press. “The last time I went was 10 or 12 years ago. It was bad way back then, just a lot of boats. You had to be careful. There were a lot of drunken people out there.”

For now, though, the waters fill again on Thursday with anxious fisherman, hoping to catch a monster lobster out there.

And on Friday morning, the waters will once again be silent, still and serene.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Travis M. Andrews

Photo source: nydailynews.com
Photo source: nydailynews.com

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