As the lobster bait shortage on the US east coast continues to attract more attention — recently prompting regulation changes in on the east coast — a North Carolina-based synthetic bait startup is in a good position to fill the gap in bait supply.
Kepley Biosystems is responsible for developing OrganoBait, a hockey puck-shaped product that mimics the smell emitted by decaying forage fish, the traditional bait used to catch crab and lobster, but uses no animal byproducts.
Anthony Dellinger, president of Kepley Biosystems, said that the shortage of forage fish for bait has been a growing issue for a while, but has recently garnered more attention.
"Early in our work it was apparent that there have been and would continue to be a so called 'forage fish collapse,'" he told Undercurrent News. "The baitfish problems are not new, but it does seem to have been more noticeable in recent months and days."
