January 31, 2023 — Industrial fishing has been in hot water with the public for the last few years, with popular documentaries and exposés pointing out the devastating impacts of poor stewardship on the ocean. This outrage isn’t unfounded: In addition to their role in overfishing, industrial fishing fleets leave a huge amount of waste in the ocean, including damaged or lost fishing gear that boats leave behind in their rush to fish. The lost gear clutters the oceans, making them less hospitable to life, and more problematic for other fishermen to use. This so-called “ghost gear” can be found anywhere that fishing boats operate and can drift to other areas. In places where spiraling currents push debris together, it is especially prevalent. Between Hawai’i and California, in a stretch of water known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, much of the metric tonnage of plastic is comprised of ghost fishing gear. But it doesn’t have to be this way; there are potential solutions that could dramatically reduce the amount of abandoned gear in the oceans, keeping plastic out of food webs and reducing the overall burden of the fishing industry on marine pollution.
New research estimates that nearly 2% of all fishing gear is lost annually. This might not sound like much, but it adds up to 25 million pots and traps, along with 78,000 square kilometers of nets. This gear poses a serious threat to ocean wildlife, which get entangled in gear or consume plastic pieces as gear breaks down. Meanwhile, broken-down plastic eventually becomes tiny microplastic particles, which are increasingly ubiquitous in marine food chains and cause serious health issues for fish and other wildlife, as well as potential harm to the people who eat them.
That gear also has a direct human cost, especially for smaller fishermen who are trying to be good stewards of the ocean: For small boats, ghost gear can affect vessels’ propulsion and ability to maneuver, ultimately making sustainable fishing even more difficult. Jon Russell, Food Justice Organizer at the North American Marine Alliance (NAMA), maintains that gear losses are less common when fishermen are careful, and says that in smaller fishing communities, there’s still a sense of pride in doing things the right way. While larger operations can afford to bear the brunt of gear losses financially and operationally, smaller fishers often can’t. But these small fishing communities are still impacted when commercial fleets set their traps down haphazardly. “Then it creates this culture: ‘Well, if they’re not going to do it right, we’re not going to do it right’ and it just gets really toxic really fast,” he says.
When gear is left on the fishing ground by larger boats, it can severely impact the daily routine of other fishermen, particularly smaller operations. “If it’s going to interfere with our daily routine, we cannot maximize our catch,” says Captain Charlie Abner, who is a small boat fisherman and shrimper in the Southeast U.S. “You lose a whole day of fishing because you’ve got to redo your rigs. You’ve got to untangle this, you’ve got to untangle that. So, it’s not easy.”