I dove for TowBoat US in the Penobscot Bay in Maine for 5 summers. It was great fun and I made lifelong friends from it (by cutting boats free). Every call I went on was a boat picking up more than one lobster pot.
From the 5 years, 50% of the boats I cut free had cutters. Spurs were the most common that I came across. There are different conclusions you can come to from those findings - either cutters don't do anything or they give the pilot a false sense of security and they are then more careless.
Either way, I have no cutters on my twin props hanging out begging to have some type of pot picked up - and I still live in Maine with all those lobster pots. So far, I haven't picked up anything in now our 12th year with the trawler.
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