Rockport has become the latest community to participate in a national program aimed at providing fishermen a cost-free solution to recycle and recover energy from old, derelict fishing gear.
When fishing gear is lost off boats, it's not really gone. In webs and rolling clumps, the nets, ropes and traps endure for decades as destructive artifacts of the fishery, suffocating life on the ocean floor, snaring fish and getting caught in propellers.
Now, gear collected in Rockport beginning today will be stripped of metals for recycling with the help of Schnitzer Steel, and processed into clean, renewable energy at the Covanta Energy-from-Waste facility in Haverhill.
An opening ceremony marking Rockport's "Fishing for Energy" partnership is scheduled for 11 a.m., on Pigeon Cove Wharf, located at the end of Breakwater Avenue. The rain location is Conference Room A in Town Hall.
Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.