I really struggle with this. When we (I'll throw my self in with the rest) get our toy caught in somebody's livelihood, is just cutting his gear loose and leaving really the right thing to do? I sail the same home waters a MaineSail, Tim R and Roger Long. The bays are littered with lobster pots. To date, I have not been caught knock on wood. But is just cutting the buoy loose the only way? Not casting stones, just thinking out loud.
In one word YES.
Here's why..
As an ex-commercial lobsterman I can say with 100% certainty that I would MUCH rather have you cut one of my pots then to drag it across six other strings causing a massive tangle that myself and six other guys will now need to spend a few hours untangling and fixing and then
buying hundreds of feet of new warp that we had to cut out of the tangle. Been there done that, not fun.
Sailors & power boaters who think they are doing you a favor by trying to untangle a pot rather than cutting it actually cause MORE HARM than good.
When strings of traps are laid out by lobsterman they are always all laid in one direction depending upon the local area/bay you are in. In one bay it could be North to South and in another East to West etc. etc..
We do this so we never lay across another string of traps. For every two pot buoys you see there are six to ten + traps connected to it on the bottom. If all the strings were not laid in the SAME direction no work could ever get done.
When sailboats snag a pot on a prop or
rudder, and think they are doing you a favor by trying to get it off without cutting it, they almost always usually not helping.
The newer wire traps are LIGHT WEIGHT and dragging ten of them is no problem for a boat with sails up or one in wind and current. Often times what happens is the boat drifts, and drags the the string across a few others while the owner is trying to figure out how to get untangled. This makes a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE mess of strings on the bottom of the sea bed!
I used to run pot buoys on both ends of my strings, as most all fisherman do. Not once did I ever loose both ends at the same time. Could it happen? Sure, anything is possible but very, very unlikely. Replacing a pot buoy is FAR cheaper than loosing 300 feet of warp to a tangle and the time in man hours involved in re-rigging and re-stringing them. Pot buoy's cost about $3.00-$6.00 and when we paint them up we always paint plenty of extras.
Like anything I am sure you'll find a few guys who may not feel this way, or tell you publicly that they do, but that is my take as someone who used to fish commercially. Cutting a pot buoy QUICKLY is almost ALWAYS the best thing you can do for the fisherman.
Every time I was in a tangle I was wishing my buoy or another guys was just cut rather than dragged. I still used to get about 60% of my pot buoys back after they washed up. If in good condition I would re-use them.
All that being said I still actually detest line cutters because they can be so dangerous to you the owner when they fail to work.. Trust me they DO NOT always cut floating line, which we have lots of up here in Maine.
In my experience the serrated type of cutter is fairly useless and the pizza wheel/non-serrated even more useless. They do not always cut the line, been there done that and have the scars from the stitches to show for it.
Sorry to be so blunt but those things just do not work well enough to keep you from diving 100% of the time. They most often do work, which is great, but when they don't and your diving on the prop you run a huge risk of being sliced & diced and the risk of potential serious injury especially if it happens in lumpy seas.
I no longer use shaft cutters but do have a hook knife on a pole, a wet suit, dive knife with lanyard and a thick dive hood to prevent head bangs in lumpy seas. I've also split me head open when the hull came down on me. This was diving on a tangle when I had Spurs on our power boat
Just my .02......
