Huzzah! One of the first February dump truck fills on Vinalhaven. 

Winter has a way of revealing who’s truly committed, and this winter has delivered some of the most inspiring progress in OceansWide’s 20-year history.

A New Year on Vinalhaven

Since January, we’ve been back on Vinalhaven Island. After 25 years away (and a brief return last summer), we hoped to reconnect with the island community. What we didn’t expect was what happened next.

Within three days of meeting with a dozen local fishermen and offering to process end-of-life lobster gear free of charge, they pledged 5,900 traps. 

That number continues to grow.

Today, Vinalhaven fishermen estimate there may be 60,000 land-based traps scattered across the island … Some sitting for 10, 20, even 30 years. In some cases, trees are growing through them.

And the fishermen are leading the charge to remove them.

Volunteers lent a hand processing traps on a blustery 20-degree day. 

953 Traps in One Week: A 20-Year Record

In just one week, we collected, processed, crushed, and removed 953 traps.

That is one of the (if not THE) most productive weeks in our long history of ocean exploration, education, and action. This work was done in temperatures in the teens and twenties, some of the coldest in decades. And there was not a single complaint to be heard.

It began when Frank “Frankie T” Thompson donated the use of his wharf, the Ice Wharf, and delivered the first 452 traps. He didn’t come alone; he brought 14 fishermen and crew members who worked alongside us all week long. It was extraordinary.

OceansWide may have brought the program to Vinalhaven, but the fishermen have made it their own.

Community Support in Action

The momentum has been unstoppable.

• One fisherman donated his excavator, solving the problem of loading crushed traps into the dump truck.
• Another donated the use of his full-sized dump truck, which now carries crushed traps to recycling in Thomaston.
• The Vinalhaven Land Trust has provided office space just steps from the ferry terminal.
• The Vinalhaven Fishermen’s Co-op rented us their summer staff house through April, allowing up to six team members to stay on island.
• Local volunteers have stepped forward daily to process traps and identify long-abandoned gear sites.

Three fishermen – Steve Rosen, Beba Rosen, and Flinn Robinson – have joined our team and have been instrumental in locating long-forgotten traps across the island.

This is no longer simply OceansWide clearing traps.

This is a partnership.

A full crew of 18 volunteers gathered on Feb. 9, 2026, to help with trap processing on Vinalhaven. 

Beneath The Surface

While land-based removal continues, fishermen have begun identifying offshore gear “hotspots” and long-lost gear balls. tangled masses of traps that continue ghost-fishing on the seafloor. Some recovered gear balls have contained 60 or more traps.

This spring, we plan to survey and recover traps in key areas, including:

• Hurricane Trench (130–200 ft deep)
• Between Gunning Rock and Smith Island
• Rockland Harbor to Carver’s Harbor
• Around Potato Island, Lane’s Island, and along Vinalhaven’s east side

We are preparing to deploy side-scan sonar, followed by diver recovery and a newly designed trap grab system. It will be challenging work, but it is exactly what we are built to do.

The Bigger Picture

The 953 traps removed from Vinalhaven this week are remarkable. But they are part of a much greater effort.

Over the past five years, OceansWide has removed: 22,500+ lobster traps total; 17,000+ end-of-life traps from land, and 5,500+ lost traps from the seafloor. 
Our teams are working in Boothbay Harbor, Gouldsboro, Matinicus, and now Vinalhaven, with surveys underway in Rockland Harbor and new sites planned for 2026 and beyond.

In Gouldsboro, community support helped us secure two acres of land in 2020, allowing us to employ more than 20 local young people and establish an educational diving and safety certification program at Sumner Memorial High School.

In Boothbay Harbor, nearly 5,000 lost traps have been recovered from the seafloor, and beginning in 2026, we will be able to process traps seasonally on the Eastside Waterfront Park wharf, reducing landfill waste by several tons annually.

On Matinicus, more than 10,000 traps have already been processed, with many more still to go.

And now, Vinalhaven is leading the way.