UPDATE: 7-26-17 at 12:40 p.m.
Monroe County Sheriff's officers have been out and about, patrolling the local waters this Wednesday as the lobster mini-season is officially underway. Earlier in the day, Marine Deputy James Hager (pictured below) and Sgt. Trevor Wirth stopped a boat operating near Geiger Key.
Check out this BIG boy:
1 of 2 2 of 2
The 7.5 pound crustacean was caught by knee-deep charters. He's definitely headed home.
Others are not so lucky in their catch (see below update line.)
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Just two hours into the 2017 two-day lobster mini-season, which began midnight Wednesday, officials made their first arrest.
Monroe County Sheriff's Office deputies say they watched as 78-year-old Nicolas Moreira went out in the waters, collected the spiny crustaceans, put them in traps back on land and then sailed out again.
He was arrested around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. Moreira was reportedly bully-netting, a night-fishing technique using a spotlight and long-handled net to catch lobster on the bottom.
When questioned, he claimed he only had one lobster, but a search of his traps revealed he had 33 proper sized critters and one undersized.
The per-person per-day bag limit in Monroe County is six.
Moreira was charges with possession of one undersized lobster and possession of over-the-limit lobster.
He was taken to jail.