Sara keeps the lid on dad's pot

Schoolgirl Sarah Trass, 16, with her anti-poaching craypot. Picture / Northern Advocate

Craypot poaching could be a thing of the past if a Whangarei schoolgirl's invention takes off.

Kamo High student Sarah Trass, 16, came up with the anti-theft idea.

"My dad kept coming home ranting and raving that people had stolen his crays. I wondered how I could stop people from pulling his pot up."

After brainstorming with her father, she came up with a concept that keeps the marker buoy attached to the craypot, but submerged out of sight, until a predetermined time.

Using a device similar to a garden hose timer, the buoy is released from the pot and bobs to the surface when the owner is ready to collect it, keeping the pot's location hidden from opportunistic thieves.

With crays selling for about $50 a kilo, Sarah has a patent for her invention in the pipeline.

"If I could get it out in the market, it'd be great," she said. "Who knows where it could go?"

The device is not limited to anti-theft, as boat propellers chomp through pot ropes and whales have been known to get tangled in them.

Sarah and her invention - named Buoyzone because she thought it was "kind of cheesy" - appeared on the children's series Let's Get Inventin'.

Buoyzone cleaned up at the regional science fair in 2004 and, after the national science fair, Sarah was one of four students picked to go to a Beijing competition - not bad for a girl who had never even touched crayfish until the TV folk made her.

"I always thought they were disgusting. They made me eat it at the end of the show. I was expecting it to be really salty but it was good."

- NORTHERN ADVOCATE