What's so Scary About Ghost Fishing?

It's estimated that we lose 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear every year in our oceans. This gear continues to kill fish and other marine organisms and pollutes our marine environment with plastic. What are we doing about it?

In this episode we speak with Joel Baziuk the Deputy Director of the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI) from the Ocean Conservancy and  Bourton Scott and Ally Stocks from the Emerald Sea Protection Society. Joel helps to coordinate global efforts to improve fishing gear to decrease the risks of it being lost at sea and to help coordinate global cleanup efforts. Bourton and Ally are part of a team that has partnered with the GGGI to help cleanup the waters around Vancouver Island.

We talk about what's currently being done, what can be done in the future, how to get involved and what can be made from recycled nets pulled from the sea!

For more information about the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, what they are working on and how you can get involved with their ghost gear reporting app for your phone Click Here.

For more information about the Emerald Sea Protection Society and the nets they are removing off the coast of Vancouver Island Click Here.

Check out the Following Brands for cool products made from Ghost Gear!

•  Bureo for skateboards, clothing, frisbees, sunglasses, etc.
• Fourth Element for swimwear.
• Axiom for cycling gear.
• ECONYL for nylon clothing.
• BraceNet for bracelets.
• BlueCycle for furniture.
• Sea2See for glasses.
• Healthy Seas Socks for Socks.
• Popsicase for phone cases.
• 2nd Chance Ropeworks for rugs.

For more information about the Aquatic Biosphere Project and what we are doing to tell the story of water Click Here.

The Aquatic Bisophere Project
The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

David Evans: 0:26

Have you ever found a buoy washed up on the beach? I love walking the shoreline when I'm at the beach, discovering whatever the ocean is washed up overnight, and it might be really exciting to find all of these treasures. But consider how they might have ended up getting washed into shore. Today, we're gonna learn why we should be concerned, not excited when we find a buoy washed up on shore. In this episode, we'll hear from the Deputy Director of the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, Joel Baziuk. And we'll also hear from Burton Scott and Ally Stocks from the Emerald sea protection society. In today's episode, we're diving into the spooky issues of ghost fishing. water we doing? And how can we do better? your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water to use and the organisms that depend on it for all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? How can we do better? buoys have many different purposes. buoys can mark dangerous reefs or rocks that boats should avoid, or to show which direction a boat needs to travel in a busy area. buoys have played important roles for hundreds of years helping ships navigate safely allowing us to harvest the bounty of the ocean and be able to find our nets and our traps. The problem comes when the buoys Get lost. So if a buoy snaps off from the line, the net or trap will be lost at the bottom of the ocean. And that's where it goes fishing truly begins. Now, to be perfectly honest, before researching for this episode, I didn't really know too much about what this ghost fishing business was all about. For instance, what makes ghost gear ghost gear? Or what makes a ghost net? A ghost net?

Joel Baziuk, Global Ghost Gear Institute: 3:25

Yeah, no, that's a really good question. I think we refer to it that the technical term is abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear or al de f g to make it a little bit more palatable. It sort of had the colloquialism ghost gear.

David Evans: 3:37

Sorry, I guess there's a quick introduction we need to make first.

Joel Baziuk, Global Ghost Gear Institute: 3:40

My name is Joel basic. I'm the Deputy Director for the global ghost gear initiative, which we'll call the Triple G i think to make it a little bit more palatable and easier to say.

David Evans: 3:52

As the director of the triple gi Joel knows what he's talking about. The triple gi has member organizations around the globe that helped to coordinate cleanups of these abandoned and lost discarded fishing gear. Al DFG. They work with national governments 17 so far, to help improve fishing practices around the world. countries involved so far include the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, but also smaller countries like Palau, Samoa, and Vanuatu where fishing makes up a huge part of their local economies and livelihoods. So this, this might get you thinking, let's just get fishermen have stopped throwing their old nets overboard to get rid of them that way. But really, that's not the main issue. Fishermen rarely dumped their gear overboard. The cause of most of this gear loss is from bad weather. Immense storms can snap line separating the gear from buoys. Another issue is if nets gets snagged on the bottom, it can become a safety issue where the ship could capsize if they're trying to pull that gear free. Green traffic can also cause abandoned gear, buoys can get caught in the propellers of massive ships and cut loose. So there's many different ways that gear can get separated from the buoys. Also, this is expensive gear. We're not talking about a $5 net that you buy from the dollar store. These nets are huge. Some are the size of football fields, they cost 10s to hundreds of 1000s of dollars. Fishermen do not want to lose these investments. Once a net or a trap is out of human control in the sea, they're floating around in the ocean or stuck on the bottom, it continues to fish. Abandoned gear often continues to catch more and more fish and start to bait itself with the fish, it's already caught. And that just attracts more fish. Abandon gear not only targets the species, the fishermen send it out to catch originally, but these natural catch anything that passes by, so this includes endangered species sharks, seals, turtles, whales, sea otters, and even penguins. This is a really big issue because some drift freely across the ocean catching whatever may swim into it. Some gear though, is heavier and will fall into the bottom. But if it falls on a coral reef, it'll just smother the reef goes fishing is estimated to account for 1/5 of all the fish that are harvested in the ocean every year. Think about that for a second. For every four fish that you eat, there's one fish that's been killed and is floating around in the ocean in a net somewhere, and nobody knows about it. This problem hurts fish populations around the globe. And we rely heavily on these fish for protein to feed the world. 3 billion people around the world rely on fish as their number one source of protein in their diet. It's a big, big issue. I guess the real question is, how many nets? Are we actually losing? Is this a couple 100? Is this a couple 100,000? How many nets are we losing? And is this getting better? Or is it getting worse?

Joel Baziuk, Global Ghost Gear Institute: 7:07

The number that most people will point to when talking about this is the 640,000 tonnes of gear lost every year. Now, that number seems it's a big number. So it's the proximately the equivalent of the mass of twice the Empire State Building to give you an idea of what that's like,

David Evans: 7:24

actually the same weight, as if you sank 106,000 African bull elephants to the bottom of the ocean every year. That's crazy. Sorry, sorry. Sorry. Okay, let's get back to Joel.

Joel Baziuk, Global Ghost Gear Institute: 7:41

But that number comes from a United Nations report from 2009. And that's quite, you know, that's a decade old. And it was an It was a best guess on the part of the authors at the time.

David Evans: 7:54

Okay, so let's recap here for a second, we have these nets and ghost gear that are just floating around or abandoned at the bottom of the ocean. And they continue to fish for anything that might come in their path. And we know that this is likely to be 640,000 tonnes that we lose every single year around the world. Let that sink in for a minute. That's an enormous enormous amount of gear that we lose every year. And that's a best guess. That's a best guess, from 10 years ago. So there must be things that we can do now to help alleviate gear loss and use our technology to be able to improve our fishing techniques. There are GPS

Joel Baziuk, Global Ghost Gear Institute: 8:47

buoys that can alert a fisher where that gear is at all times and is connected to an app and a GPS network. So they can look on their phone and find out where their net is exactly, or their deployed gear, whatever it happens to be. It's really, really amazing that they're able to do that these days. But even certain certain technology like blue ocean gear, for example, out of California, one of our triple gy members has a boy that has sensors in it similar to what you'd find in your mobile phone, you can actually distinguish between gear that just breaks loose, and gear that gets in caught by a whale or some other interaction. All that is to say that there's there's a lot of this coming out on the horizon. We're testing this in some of our projects around the world. But the tech side of thing is is is really, really interesting.

David Evans: 9:31

So the good news is, we're working on it. It's a problem, we realize it and we're starting to find solutions to it. But this is a global issue. This isn't just an issue for people with an extreme amount of money. To be able to afford high price buoys with technology inside them. We need to think of global strategies that will work everywhere around the globe. These are things that the triple gi can help to implement with other national governments in their own jurisdictions. We can actually influence when and where fishing gear can be deployed. So we can avoid high traffic shipping channels where there's huge, huge vessels going through that would tear up the lines and we would lose all that fishing gear. We can also inflate by different management systems, so having fewer nets go out buy quota systems for different amounts of fish that can be caught. Even with the design of the gear that we use, we can choose nets in gear that are less likely to get snagged at the bottom or less likely to actually break down and be lost at sea. All these choices and decisions can help lead to less and less gear loss. And we are likely seeing less and less gear loss. But it's hard to get an idea of how much gear we're actually losing every year because there's a negative association with losing your gear. It's it's something that we need to break the stigma around fishermen reporting their gear loss because it's not necessarily your fault. But we need to have an idea of how big this problem is, and how best to tackle it. And where these, these pieces of gear are located. Because too big ocean out there. It's It's not an easy task to go out and start to recover this gear that for for an idea of what that's like, we reached out to the Emerald sea protection society, because they're doing on the ground or other on the water work to help recover gear off the coast of Vancouver Island.

Bourton Scott, Emerald Sea Protection Soceity: 11:49

My name is Bourton Scott. I'm one of the founding members of the organization. I'm a commercial diver, as well as a field person for for this project.

Ally Stocks, Emerald Sea Protection Society: 11:58

And I'm Ally Stocks. I'm a marine scientist. And I started helping out with Emerald sea maybe about four years ago, and I'm one of the members of the board of directors.

David Evans: 12:10

burnin alley and the Emerald see protection society are actively working to clean up our coastlines in Canada. And as you can imagine, it's not easy to find one of these ghost nets. I mean, there's a lot out there. Don't get me wrong, but it's a big ocean. So how do you even get started? What's the best way to find a ghost net? Yeah,

Bourton Scott, Emerald Sea Protection Soceity: 12:33

there's definitely a few approaches. The most successful that we found so far is word of mouth like actually talking and working with fishermen to identify areas where there is potential gear loss or legacy gear loss from the past.

Ally Stocks, Emerald Sea Protection Society: 12:47

Yeah, there's some technologies that are being piloted like sidescan sonar, so literally scanning the ocean floor to try and see if there's gear. It's been improving over over the past few years. But generally speaking, it's it's fairly costly, and not necessarily the easiest to actually identify gear that's under the water. Another tool that we use is remote operated cameras, so something that you can operate from onshore, but even then you kind of want to have a general sense of the likelihood of a piece of gear being in that area, because they're not necessarily going to go out and just video, you know, our entire expansive coastline.

David Evans: 13:25

What do you mean, we don't have time for that? We don't have enough money to go and do that.

Ally Stocks, Emerald Sea Protection Society: 13:28

That's what we would do. If the if there was all the money in the world, we'd be out there just just puttering all day long.

David Evans: 13:35

All right, so scanning the bottom of the ocean, it works. But it's not the best way forward. So how can we get people involved with this, say, if you're just out on the boat, and you happen to pop upon a ghost net? What do you do, the triple gi actually has an app for your phone that you can download. And you can report any type of fishing gear. So this could be from just a hook that you find to football field size net. And it helps them to get an idea of what the level of fishing al DFG is out there. And also how they can help coordinate recovery efforts for all this ghost gear.

Joel Baziuk, Global Ghost Gear Institute: 14:20

You can report gear last year as you find it to our global data portal directly through the app. It's a very simple touchscreen interface, lots of images. And again, you will find gear if you look for near a body of water. There's always going to be something nearby if there if there's if there's fishing activity somewhere.

David Evans: 14:40

So this is a really easy way that anyone can help out and help eliminate ghost nets. And whether it's a small cleanup effort, or you've already found a huge net that you might not be able to take care of. I'm always curious, how do we actually get rid of these enormous nets that are in the middle of the ocean? I mean, I don't have a boat big enough.

Bourton Scott, Emerald Sea Protection Soceity: 15:02

It definitely takes a pretty significant effort just organizing people and equipment alone takes quite a bit of time. All of these sites that we do that aren't dock cleanups are are offshore. So you're looking at a you know one to several hour boat ride out to site and Then, depending and say conditions, whether you actually get in the water and do recoveries kind of based on all that stuff,

Ally Stocks, Emerald Sea Protection Society: 15:27

maybe for a bit more of this sort of what logistically does the day look like Burton lives this every day as a commercial diver, but maybe people don't realize the water in BC is pretty cold, usually around, you know, eight degrees Celsius at its warmest. So we're in full, you know, dry suits, you got a ton of equipment and wait, you know, we have to have a surface crew that is ensuring safety for all the divers that are underwater, we need at least two divers, usually more. And ideally, you know, having actual communications between the divers and the surface. So some pretty neat technology and then depending on the the size of the equipment that we're trying to pull up so so for example, this saying that what you can imagine like the full size saying that is like a football field, like they're, they're massive. So it's, you know, you can't just be out there in a canoe, right. So you also need a boat and, and equipment to actually pull that net out of the water. So the divers themselves can use controlled ways to do it under the water or lift the net from under the water. But then, you know, once you have more of a force of gravity, you need the right equipment, topside to actually remove that gear. So there's some pretty incredible imagery from some of the the projects all over the world have these just full like net balls, like these things, the size of houses of a year that's accumulated and you really need impressive, you know, machinery to actually pull that out of the water. Yeah.

David Evans: 17:00

So now you have a netball that can be the size of a house, what do you do with it. So you actually can recycle a good amount of it, a lot of the nets are created with nylon, and this is a highly recyclable material. The problem is, how long have the Nets been down there, and how many things are entangled with it, because you need to have a pure substance to use as a as a material, you have to get all the barnacles, all the algae, everything off of it. So it's a huge time investment and an effort investment to be able to recycle these materials, but companies are doing it.

Ally Stocks, Emerald Sea Protection Society: 17:40

There are some really amazing businesses that are creating, you know, skateboards, sunglasses, bathing suits, you name it out of last fishing gear, you got to look up, burrito,

David Evans: 17:54

check out the show notes, because I'm gonna put a few links to different companies that are selling these kind of repurpose products that I think are just so fascinating. Of course, not all of this equipment can be recycled, some of it is repurposed into new fishing gear, but some of it is just so old and degraded that unfortunately, it does go into landfill. But at least it isn't still out there. And adding not only to ghost fishing, but also to plastics issues in our oceans. So some studies have actually found that 50% of the plastic in our oceans is just abandoned fishing gear that's just out there. It's not water bottles. So we always imagined it to be no, this is fishing gear that's just left out there. These were found in the North Pacific jar, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 50% of the plastics, the macro plastics, the bigger plastics, is just fishing gear. So this isn't only a fishing issue. This is a plastics issue. It's a pollution issue, and it's a human welfare issue. Now, that takes us back to our title, what are we doing? Well, we've covered that for the last 20 minutes. But how can we do better? So how can you and I help with this problem? Well, there's lots of different ways we can support these companies that are collecting this ghost gear that's out there. We can also buy repurpose products that are being made with this stuff. So make sure to check out the show notes. I'll leave links to many different companies that are actually producing goods that you can buy that are made with this stuff. It's really cool. And I highly recommend checking out these companies. Are you looking for a way to get even more involved. Lots of these groups that are cleaning up the oceans are volunteer based, and they are NGOs that need volunteers, so they're always happy to accept more help where they can get it. So make sure you sign up for a beach cleanup, or an offshore cleanup. If you're a diver, the more help the better. Another great way to help is to actually help the triple gi find all of this ghost gear. So you can download the triple GIS app on Apple or Android and any ghost gear that you come across. You can actually take a photo of it geo located in that feeds right back To the triple gi and all of their partner organizations to help us get an idea of what the scale is on this problem, and where we should concern our efforts, and concentrate them so that we can clean up this problem before it gets any worse. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, we'll be releasing our full deep dive interview with the triple gi. So Joel Baziuk interview on Wednesday. And then we'll also be releasing our full deep dive interview with Ally and Bourton from the Emerald sea protection society on Thursday, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of those. You can't wait until then, Well, you're in luck the triple g i and the Emerald sea protection society. They have websites and they have all the social media channels. So please check all of their stuff out. Both organizations have so much information. Thank you to both organizations for being on the show this week. And we can't wait to see what you guys do next. And that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe so you don't miss any of our future episodes coming out. Leave us a rating and review. It means so much to us to hear back from all of our listeners. I'm the host and producer David Evans. And I would just like to thank the rest of the team from the aquatic biosphere project, specifically to Paula Polman, Sophie Cervera, and Anna Bettini. Thanks for all of your help. To learn more about the aquatic biosphere project and what we're doing here in Alberta telling the story of water. Check us out at aquatic biosphere.ca And if you had any questions or comments about the show we'd love to hear them. Email us at conservation@aquaticbiosphere.org please don't forget to like subscribe and leave us a review. It really helps us out. Get excited for next Monday when we release our next episode, all about seawater desalination. We talked to Heather Cooley from the Pacific Institute about water stress. How many cities across the world are actually about to run out of water and how seawater desalination might be able to help. Thanks for listening to the water we doing podcast and until next time, it's been a splash