Benoit Caillart wrote:
> A sort of tag has been found on a beach of Brittany, West of France. The tag > is a blue ring, 1 cm width, roughly 6 cm in diameter. The label engraved on > it reads "CANADA LOB S-F 27/88 - 133907". Apparently, it concerns lobsters > from Canada ... > > The tag has been manufactured by Canada Mayer, Montreal. > > What is it ?
It sounds like a tag for a lobster trap. In Atlantic Canada, each licensed lobster fisherman is allowed only a fixed number of traps and he is issued each year with the appropriate number of tags. Those are attached to the traps; a trap without a tag being an illegal trap.
Someone better informed may correct me but I expect that the one found was issued for the 1988 season in Lobster Fishing Area 27 of the government's Scotia-Fundy Region (now part of the Maritimes Region). LFA 27 is off Cape Breton Island and just outside the Gulf of St.Lawrence.
I would guess that the trap was broken in a storm and that part of its wooden structure, with the tag attached, then floated across the Atlantic during the last nine years.
Trevor Kenchington
-- Trevor J. Kenchington PhD [log in to unmask] Gadus Associates, Office(902) 889-9250 R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour, Fax (902) 889-9251 Nova Scotia B0J 2L0, CANADA Home (902) 889-3555
Science Serving the Fisheries http://home.istar.ca/~gadus
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