You ever sail by a crap pot in the middle of a channel and wish you could pull it out and trash it legally? For one month (raised from a prior 10 days), all crab pots in the water are free game in Texas.
In Atlantic Canada you must possess a commercial crab/lobster licence that has a quota attached to it. For those fisherman if they leave the trap in the water one hour after the 12 am deadline, for that particular time frame, DFO will hunt you down and you will be heavily fined. Hence you will never see intentially abandoned traps left here along the coast unless they were lost during a storm or due to ice.