The problem of abandoned fishing gear is not new. Environmentalists, researchers, and others have done research on and recovery of such fishing gear going back decades. There have been professional interventions and citizen scientist ones, including crab pot removals as shown in “Derelict crab pot removals (2008-2021).” (Source: Derelict crab pot removals -- 2008-2021; 2019-2021, blue and 2008-2015, red)
The research on the problem and solutions associated with abandoned fishing gear is extensive, including Ecological and Economic Effects of Derelict Fishing Gear in the Chesapeake Bay -- 2015/2016 Final Assessment Report by VIMS, Versar, CSS-Dynamac, Global Science & Technology. From the report:
Derelict fishing gear represents a major challenge to marine resource management: whether through deliberate abandonment or through accidental loss, derelict traps in particular have significant negative effects both economic (e.g., reduced fishery harvest from ghost fishing and gear competition that leads to the reduced efficiency of active gear) and ecological (e.g., degraded habitats and marine food webs and crab and bycatch mortality). Throughout the Chesapeake Bay, commercial harvest of hard-shelled blue crabs is a major fishing activity: every year sees the deployment of several hundred thousand blue crab traps (known locally as crab “pots”) across the Bay, of which an estimated 12-20% are lost each year.
NOAA has funded the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to lead a derelict fishing gear removal and data collection project to bring some reason to the many derelict fishing gear location and removal programs across the country. According to VIMS to lead national program for managing derelict fishing gear, the NOAA grant “will fund removal of the pots and traps used to harvest crabs and lobsters, and establish a Derelict Trap Policy Innovation Lab to synthesize the collected data to inform prevention and mitigation policies at the state and federal levels.”
Learn more about the problem and solutions in NOAA’s Derelict Fishing Gear and in the videos below.
Top image from Ecological and Economic Effects of Derelict Fishing Gear in the Chesapeake Bay -- 2015/2016 Final Assessment Report, p. 3.