Two decades after Connecticut's lobster industry collapsed, federal funding has been approved to begin removing some of the hundreds of thousands of derelict lobster traps left on the floor of the Long Island Sound, a “ghost fishery" that continues to trap and kill marine life to this day.
The $569,000 included in the new federal budget bill will finance a coalition, led by The Maritime Aquarium of Norwalk, which will oversee retrieval of the traps. The goal is to eventually hire local charter fishing vessels and fishermen to collect an initial 3,000 traps over two years, ultimately getting rid of abandoned marine debris that has upset the Sound's food chain and become a source of pollution in the waters.
