66 ABOUT LOBSTERS 



Modern traps consist of some sort of cage with an 

 access via one or more "eyes" [or heads]. They fall 

 into two broad classes; those with an eye at the top 

 which, for convenience, are being referred to as " pots " 

 ( examples being the Cornish, French and Dutch pots ) , 

 and those with a single eye or two eyes situated at the 

 sides, referred to as " creels " and commonly employed 

 around Scotland and Canada, as well as elsewhere. 



A test was carried out in Orkney waters on the 

 relative efficiency of the Scottish creel [as in Figure 71, 

 and the Cornish pot [Figure 91. The two traps were 

 found to be roughly equally effective as judged by the 

 number of lobsters and crabs caught. The creel took 66 

 lobsters and 91 marketable sized crabs compared with 

 48 lobsters and 86 crabs in the pot. The Cornish pot, 

 however, took a slightly larger average size of crab than 

 the Scottish creel. The average widths were 5.5" and 

 5.2" respectively. 



A proportion of lobsters and crabs which have en- 

 tered a trap, escape again through the eye(s). It is 

 reasonable to suppose that escape is harder from a pot 

 than from a creel. This however, is offset by the fact 

 that, in practice, the eye of the pot is larger and it is 

 probably for this reason that in the experiments refer- 

 red to above, the pot retained larger crabs than the 

 creel. It has been suggested that a pot has an advan- 

 tage over a creel on fishing grounds which have thick 

 growth of long tangle, it being assumed that in these 

 circumstances the low-lying eyes of the creels will be- 

 come blocked. Against this, however, must be placed 

 the fact that under most conditions the creel eyes are 

 probably more readily reached. 



Pots are constructed with a single entrance. Creels, 

 on the other hand, may be single or double entrance. 

 Experiments have shown that the double-entrance creel 

 fishes better than the single entrance. In the test the 

 double-entrance creel caught 62 lobsters and 356 mar- 

 ketable crabs, as compared with 56 lobsters and 280 



