Two Way Recycling 2020

Many thanks to Eva, Robin and the whole Matinicus Recycles Enterprise. As the successor to a barn and house full of items- debris, steam era tools, unuseable old fishing gear, somebody else's Christmas decor- to which I've added my own 15 years' worth, I have a deep appreciation for being able to recycle this stuff the F out of here.

Today was light; only 1 pickup truck load, comprised of oil jugs, buoy paint cans, boat work trash, a vhf boat tv antenna that took its last flight off our roof some time over the winter, a fuel pump from the Ford truck and a big yellow tool box I found floating one day and never put to use because it wouldn't close.

It's not a one way relationship. Last week, I crawled over the multiple ton rope discard pile beside the recycling sheds and harvested a number of coils of purple rope. I find this precious now because I am not inclined to pay money for spray paint or new rope to create marks on my trap lines that comply with the latest North Atlantic Right Whale protection measures. I also have the luxury on not needing to convert 800 pots' worth of rope because I am small-time.

How, you ask, does purple rope save whales? It, of course, does no such thing. It may help save the lobstering community from misdirected and fact-starved efforts to increase the NARW population. This measure is intended to demonstrate that these whales are not becoming entangled in Maine lobster gear. For the interested person, I'd recommend following the ubiquitous allegations that lobster gear is implicated in right whale mortality back to the source data, which is from an extremely small sample in an extremely small time window, and of very dubious statistical validity (remember accuracy and validity from science classes?). It's junk science but one can find it repeated, mantra-like on well funded and very selective advocacy group web content. One can read the sentence, but it's more informative to follow the links all the way back to the source

My preference would be to outlaw lobstering entirely in the Great Lakes if Canada and the U.S. can agree to do so. This would have every bit as much benefit to the whale population as the proposed new rules without putting fishing families out of business.

I am separating the rope into its 3 threads and weaving 1 and 3 foot strands of those through my trap lines at the proper intervals. It looks cool and perhaps will help the fishery.