If they are your pots and have your ID tags on them then you can get them.

Here's a related question:

I sometimes snag ghost pots while blackfishing with my Mighty Mite anchor. What should I do with a ghost pot once I have it up to the boat?

Fuzzy

If I were lobstering, I'd consider them salvage and keep them for myself. However, I'm not lobstering right now, and the last ghost pot I pulled up went back to it's original owner! (That might be a first!) He had a plastic name tag with his phone number on the pot, so I called him up and left the pot at the boat launch. I did a follow up call the next day and found out that he did come and pick it up.

On my earlier outing on the Dempsey with the DEP,( http://www.ctfisherman.com/ubbthreads/ub...5044#Post965044 ) they hauled in a number of "ghost" pots. I also asked if they could be removed but aside from the lack of storage space the answer was that since they still had the owners tags on them it could be seen as stealing them. They might even be abandoned but they still belonged to somebody else, so they were disabled and returned to the water.

I knew that this would not be very good for anyone fishing in that area but there was nothing else to do with them and still be legal.