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


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Trevor J. Kenchington PhD                         [log in to unmask]
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