VINALHAVEN – Robert Warren probably knows the ocean bottom as well as any federal scientist. He’s been fishing Penobscot Bay for lobsters since 1954, when he was just 11 years old.

This week, the captain of the Sea Breeze had the chance to prove his knowledge, chauffeuring a Maine Department of Marine Resources researcher around the lobster grounds near Stonington, North Haven and Vinalhaven. Though he knows the waters well, he’s actually seeing the sea floor for the first time.

As a robot camera hovered around Warren’s traps 87 feet underwater on Tuesday, beaming images to a television in the Sea Breeze, the lobsterman was transfixed.

“Wow,” he kept saying, as he watched crabs and lobsters scuttle over and into his traps. “Isn’t that something.”

“For some of these older guys, it’s like looking at the moon,” added cameraman Bill Campbell.

For Laura Ludwig, who is coordinating this $85,000 project for the DMR, the image is old hat. Ludwig has boarded a different lobster boat every morning since Labor Day in an attempt to learn what happens to lobster gear, particularly floating rope, after it’s placed on the sea floor.

Floating rope has become a controversy in the lobstering world as environmental advocates blame snares of floating rope for entanglements that kill dozens of whales each year. When floating rope is used for ground lines – ropes that string traps together- it can create huge loops rising from the sea floor, which can ensnare whales.

Entangled whales can be trapped underwater and drown because they are unable to reach the surface to breathe. Even if a whale manages to reach the surface, it often carries away fishing nets or pieces of rope, which can cut into its skin and cause infections.

According to Bob Bowman, who runs the Maine office of the Atlantic Large Whales Disentanglement Network from Somesville, fishing gear is responsible for half of all right whale deaths. Right whales are particularly vulnerable because, with only 300 whales remaining, they’re one of the world’s most endangered animals. Last year, nine right whales were found entangled and one killed in the Gulf of Maine.

Federal regulators at the national Marine Fisheries Service are working on a new plan for reducing whale entanglement, with a draft likely to be released by the first of the year. The new rules are scheduled to take effect in 2005.

The state Department of Marine Resources is advocating for an exemption to federal restrictions for Maine lobstermen who work inshore areas considered of low risk to whales. The proposed exemption line, drawn according to historic whale sightings, is mostly within the three-mile limit of state waters, and would benefit the 5,100 of Maine’s 6,500 lobstermen who don’t hold permits to work in federal waters.

Bowman supports the idea, and has even proposed extending the exemption out to the three-mile line because his concern is primarily for whales in their feeding grounds, which tend to be in deeper water. Giving fishermen some flexibility inshore can only reduce the amount of gear that could harm whales in deeper water, he said.

Nothing is sure with federal regulators, however, so the industry is fighting on every front, said Patrice Farrey, executive director of the Maine Lobsterman’s Association.

“It’s all so squishy, it’s impossible to predict,” Farrey said Friday.

Lobstermen’s biggest fear is that they’ll lose the right to use floating rope, which they claim is a necessary tool along the coast of Maine. Jagged rocks on the sea floor can snag and even cut sinking rope.

And Maine’s strong tidal action just makes the problem worse, tangling ropes and forcing them into crevices. Sinking rope would waste time and money, fishermen say.

Lobster is responsible for nearly two-thirds of all Maine’s fishing revenue, with 58.8 million pounds bringing nearly $200 million to the state last year. Any regulations that limit Maine’s only booming fishery are of great concern to the DMR.

So the state has hired Bill Campbell of Warwick, R.I., to film hundreds of hours of lobster gear and sea bottom in hopes of proving that Maine lobstermen need float rope.

The Maine Lobsterman’s Association has provided the boats and the fishermen who’ve served as guides during this seven-week project.

“One of the frustrations has been that the people who do these whale plans tend to be managers and people without a lot of on-the-water experience,” said “Let’s really look at what’s going on down there and then try to figure out how to fix it,” she said Wednesday.

The camera, a remote operated vehicle christened “Little Bubba” by Campbell’s daughter, looks a like a curious beetle with its twin headlights flanking a bulbous dome containing a single camera. The sturdy little rover and its accompanying recording equipment, cables and generator would cost $60,000 to replace, Campbell said.

On Tuesday, the camera bobbed and weaved around Warren’s traps, filming a straight line of rope, stretched like a tightrope just five feet above the rocky sea floor.

“What a beautiful set,” Ludwig said. “That’s why people use float rope.”

Other fishermen were less precise, with loops of floating rope reaching 20 feet in height – more than high enough to entangle a whale.

The state is looking to fishermen like Warren to learn how to combine whale protection and productive lobstering, and they’ve learned that something as small as shortening the ropes between traps can make a tremendous difference, Ludwig said.

Working with the fishermen day in and day out, she’s become convinced that they aren’t exaggerating about the “hard bottom” that complicates Maine lobstering. Some of the ledges and crevices are far steeper than they appear on charts, she said.

“We saw some mountains,” Ludwig said.

An anonymous fisherman encouraged Ludwig over the crackling radio Tuesday afternoon, putting into words what every fisherman along the coast of Maine has been thinking, and putting his faith in this project.

“We’ve got to prove to the National Marine Fisheries Service that the bottom of the ocean isn’t flat,” he said.