Stonington— Ocean Community Chamber of Commerce has announced a bigger and better Stonington Lobster Trap Tree for this year.

“At a minimum, about four feet taller than last year,” said Lisa Konicki, president of the Ocean Community Chamber of Commerce. She explained the chamber is adding 60 more traps and buoys as well as more lights, and, this year, they plan to change the shape slightly to be more like a traditional tree.

To date, the chamber has 410 completed buoys of the 420 that will decorate the tree.

“We’ve been working on it since February,” she said.

Konicki explained that the project involves artists from all across Connecticut and Rhode Island, and all the buoys are hand delivered and then picked up from the artists creating them.

Artists have three months to complete work on the buoys, which take many forms, Konicki said. Many are painted or adorned with materials such as yarn, metal or clay, but some do not use the Styrofoam buoy at all, instead creating them out of glass or wood, like the buoy Dan Marantz of Westerly created by piecing together various types of wood in a mosaic pattern and turning it.

The 25-foot 2021 tree, initially envisioned by Konicki in the spring of 2021, was constructed out of 378 new lobster traps, and decorated with 360 buoys painted by professional artists and students and thousands of multicolored LED lights.

Named one “18 amazing Christmas trees around the world” by the British Broadcasting Corp., which listed it alongside such iconic trees as the Rockefeller Center tree in New York City, the Trafalgar Square tree in London, and the Vatican City tree, the Lobster Trap Tree gained international recognition and attracted visitors from as far away as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.

This year’s 420 buoys come from different sources, she explained. The bottom tier is decorated with 40 buoys painted by children in Stonington and paid for by the chamber.

“They find their buoy; they pose with their buoy; they’re signing autographs — they are very proud of their work. It’s a big deal,” she said of the children’s reaction to being part of the project last year.

An additional 24 buoys are dedicated to each of the fishing operations at the Stonington Town dock. The chamber commissions an artist to create each buoy, and they are gifted to the fishermen when removed from the tree.

The rest are a combination of sponsored buoys and artist-donated buoys, many of which will be auctioned in February to support the project.

“There’s deep, personal meaning in many of the buoys on this tree,” she said, mentioning that in addition to several marriages being commemorated by individual sponsors, there are also many memorials.

Expenses from last year’s $45,000 tree left the chamber $7,000 in the negative, but sales of related products like puzzles and ornaments as well as an auction of many of the buoys offset that. Konicki said this year’s expenses will be significantly less because the chamber stored all of last year’s traps and lights as well as the door to reuse.

Nonetheless, there are still considerable expenses involved in the project, including costs for permits, insurance, 420 buoys, and the additional traps and lights.

Konicki said that it was an economic boon to Stonington Borough, and many businesses saw an increase in foot traffic and profits last year, but she could not begin to guess how many visitors the tree welcomed.

“Was it over 100,000? I don’t know,” she said, but added that no matter when she drove by the tree — in the morning or late at night — there were people at the tree.

The tree lighting will take place at 4:30 p.m. on November 26, at Town Dock in Stonington Borough.