Every year Key West goes lobster crazy when the "open" lobster season officially opens in early August. Throughout August many area restaurants offer to cook up any lobster lucky divers bring in, and all have lobster specials that will delight your taste buds and go easy on the wallet!

Looks like good eatin'

Check it out here: Florida Keys Lobster Season

Enjoy it while you can. Every year, the Commission gets more and more pressure to do away with the mini-season all together in the Keys. Furthermore, they are considering stricter guidelines to curb the amount of traffic for the opening of the regular season.

Already, a few years ago, the county banned all snorkling and diving within 300 ft of the shoreline during the 2-day mini-season. We are averaging about 3 deaths per year contributed to the mini-season alone.

When you go out from Pennecamp to the open water of the Atlantic out the north passage there is an old sunken barge with concrete on it to the left of the channel as you are about to enter open water. It's abou t amile or two from teh main shoreline. Is it legal to take lobster from there during the regular season?

No, toodeep, it is not legal. The state waters off the Pennekamp area are restricted.

By the way, 5 more dead this year.

I called Pennecamp yesterday and they told me you could take lobster within the park boundaries as long as you did not obstruct a channel by having a dive flag in a channel where boats couldn't give you a 100 yd space, around man made objects or patch reefs with the park. I understood him to mean that it was OK to take lobster in the vicinity of the barge in question but not from around the barge itself. Is that wrong? The restricted areas are so confusing.

I'll be coming there from Mobile 8/9-8/16 and would like to have a few bugs for dinner.

Read & heard last week that some people have already taken some lobster from the Gulf before the mini-season starts & law inforcement is doing nothing bout it, that's not right!

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Oh I wouldn't say that. Police used trackers to watch a Cudjoe Key guy illegally harvesting lobster. They raided his house yesterday and found 6000 lobster. It's all over the news today.

6,000?!?! For real? Is that a typo?
That's insane!

(welcome back everyone!)

Here's the Associated Press article.

6,000 lobster tails is 1,000 times the legal bag limit and worth $30,000!

Wow! I didn't realize illegal traps (dumping junk) was such a big problem in the Keys/

What a shame...

We are going to be in the Keys for Labor Day. Does anyone have any information about a Dive Charter that will take you out for Lobster?
We will have kayaks there as well so if anyone knows of a place we can kayak and get lobster snorkeling that would be great as well.

Good question. I have never done the snorkeling for lobster thing myself, but the best dive shop in the Keys is Dive Key West - they really are awesome and can give you the best advice, I think... Bob and CeCe Holston own it. They are cool ... here's their info:

Bob Holston
Dive Key West Inc
3128 N. Roosevelt Blvd.
Key West, FL 33040
305-296-3823
Dive Key West

That's a good start to the info search

I went lobstering this past August during the mini-season...my first time, and wow was it an experience. Yeah, Lobsters taste great, and everyone wonders why they are so expensive, but I had a pretty hard time. They are quick little animals, I would probably charge more if I were selling mine.