If You Build a Better Crab Trap. . .

Will the world still beat a path to your door?

PHAs are plastics that are made by bacteria. PHAs also are eaten by bacteria.

“It’s like fat,” Kirk Havens says. He explained that just as vertebrates store energy in fat deposits, many bacteria synthesize PHAs—short for polyhydroxalkanoates—to store carbon and energy. An individual bacterium will draw on its little dab of polymer reserve to get through the lean days in its microscopic world, unless a bigger microorganism eats it first. Anything made of PHA will biodegrade, simply because bacteria start eating it.

Havens is one of a group of VIMS researchers working with Jason McDevitt, William & Mary’s director of technology transfer, to bring products based on these biopolymers to market. The products are aimed at an environmentally conscious market that ranges from commercial fishermen to recreational hunters to the millions of people using a wide range of personal care products.
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A census of a sampling of the Chesapeake ghost pot catch showed the VIMS scientists that lost fishing traps place a heavy toll on sea life. The group began investigating the properties of PHA in a quest for a way to disarm lost traps by incorporating an “escape panel.” The VIMS group examined a number of materials and methods before settling on a PHA panel.

“Other escape panels use degradable or biodegradable attachment points,” Bilkovic explained. “We have found that it just takes a little bit of encrustation from a single barnacle to prevent that from working. The nice thing about PHA is that the material completely disappears over time.”

Their first panel, designed for the blue-crab trade, was made to erode gradually in the water over a period of eight to ten months. The panel is designed to take the place of a circular cull ring, required by the state, whose purpose is to let undersized blue crabs escape the trap. Angstad held up the latest model, an oval piece of plastic that seems indistinguishable from a conventional plastic.

If PHA doesn't  work out for crab pots, how about water and soda bottles?