I talked to an FWC in person this weekend. He said only an @$$ WOULD write you up, but there quite a few "cowboys" in the FWC. He said technically, if the snare has a "blocker" which prohibits complete closure of the loop smaller than a three inch circle, it is considered "lobster safe." He said there must be a covering on the cable, or the line must be ROUND weed trimmer style plastic that has no cutting edges unlike the square stuff. If using anything with a tensioner, like the automatic snare, it must have a no crush limit of at least the three inch diameter circle without a bug in it. If made of round plastic weed trimmer line, it does NOT have to have the blocker if it is a manually operated unit.
He also said that if a communal catch container is used, there must be some way to designate which person has which lobsters on sight. He said my idea of cable ties was an awesome idea. This way there isn't any argument that one diver has 18 bugs!
(The idea was to carry different colored cableties. Each diver using the communal box is assigned a different color band. When they catch a lobby, they band it and throw it in. Each diver wears the band on their bc on the front rings. This way each diver's limit can be checked quickly.
I hope to make a few of these snares to bring with us to SoFlo. (See South Florida Trip in Florida Conch Divers) Whew it's official