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A Single Discarded Fishing Net Can Keep Killing for Centuries
By Jason Bittel
Divers off the coast of the Cayman Islands last month came
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
A Single Discarded Fishing Net Can Keep Killing for Centuries
By Jason Bittel
Divers off the coast of the Cayman Islands last month came face to face with a ghoulish sight: a gigantic mass of abandoned fishing gear and its catch. The monstrous net, as wide and deep as the Hollywood sign is tall, drifted just below the water's surface with tendrils that teemed with hundreds of dead and dying fish and sharks.
The divers attempted to cut some of the trapped souls from the tangled mess of netting and buoys, but most of them were already lost. Many more had been dead for so long, the divers said, that it was impossible to tell what species they were. The men tried to haul the massive net back to shore but said it was much too heavy for their boat to tow. So this marine blob is still out there.
It's not alone. In fact, this knot of ruin is completely unremarkable in the context of the global "ghost gear" crisis. A new report from the international nonprofit World Animal Protection (WAP) estimates that at least 700,000 tons of new ghost gear enter the sea each year. Once it's there, the flotsam can harm all kinds of sea life, including turtles, penguins, sea lions, dolphins, whales and diving shorebirds. The report found that 45 percent of all the marine mammals listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species have been killed or harmed by abandoned fishing gear.
"It's not shocking to me," said Charles Grisafi, the Florida and Caribbean regional coordinator for the NOAA Marine Debris Program. "These nets are huge. You can see gill nets out there over two miles long."
Two. Miles. Long.
Ocean plastic has garnered lots of attention in recent years (as it should), but fishing gear makes up a huge chunk of that problematic plastic. Unlike plastic bottles, drinking straws and grocery bags, this gear was designed for one purpose: catching and killing sea life. And it continues to do so long after the anglers who deployed it return to shore.
Ghost gear masses like the Caribbean discovery are essentially giant fish traps that perpetually re-bait themselves. The trapped animals attract predators and scavengers who then become ensnared themselves. After death, their rotting carcasses draw in still more victims and the cycle goes on and on, basically forever.
This is not hyperbole. The plastics that make up most of the nets in the oceans today take around 600 years to break apart. One old gill net found wedged between rocks off the coast of the San Juan Islands reportedly sat atop a pile of marine bird and mammal bones that was three feet deep.
For larger animals like whales, entanglements don't always bring a quick death. They instead confer a life sentence of towing around a heavy aquatic ball and chain, the health effects of which scientists are only beginning to understand. (Spoiler alert: It ain't good.) And as with other ocean pollution, some animals eat ghost gear, as evidenced by necropsies of 22 sperm whales stranded in the North Sea. Of all the nonfood items in their guts, 78 percent was fishing gear, including, in one case, a plastic fishing net that was more than 42 feet long.
Forty-two. Feet. L