The Tale of Lost Fishing Gear

In a coastal Nova Scotian village, John and crew venture out on the water to check their lobster traps on his Cape Islander early one March morning. When the crew haul up the trawl of traps onto the boat to sort and band the lobsters, one of his crew members discovers that the rope is chaffed on one of the lines, and a trap is missing, likely from a powerful winter storm. 

The fishers try to find the trap by towing along the ocean floor in the area where the gear was set, but they could not recover it, even after several hours of searching. They report the lost trap to the government fishery managers and continue their day fishing.  

Now that this trap is lost in the ocean, it is considered abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear, commonly known as ghost gear.  

As part of achieving  Goal 14  of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, various organizations such as the  Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) ,  United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) ,  Global Ghost Gear Initiative , and  Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO)  are working to prevent and mitigate the impacts of ghost gear on our oceans.

Ghost gear has different negative environmental, social, and economic impacts, which make it an important issue to solve. 

Since the 1970s, research has been pursued to understand the sources, amount, lifespan, distribution and impacts of ghost gear. With the increasing export-driven goals of marine fisheries, the quantity of ghost gear in the ocean is only expected to grow worldwide. 

Within the Canadian context, commercial landings and marine fisheries production have been valued at 3.3 billion in 2016, obtaining status as the most profitable sector in the Canadian fishing industry. Southwest Nova Scotia (SWNS) is considered the most productive American lobster (Homarus americanus) fishing area in Canada. The commercial American lobster fishing industry is one of the most essential industries in Nova Scotia, where the harvest of this crustacean contributes to over $500 million each year. Many rural communities across Atlantic Canada rely on the fishing industry for their livelihood, which may be impacted due to ALDFG.

Little research has been conducted to understand the negative effects of ALDFG on commercial fishing markets, target species, and marine environments. However, from the available published research and local evidence, ghost gear is a serious problem.

Lost gear can travel far from its source location before sinking and accumulating on the seafloor or appearing on shorelines. Additionally, ' ghost fishing ' can trap economically valuable catch along with species that aren’t targeted as part of the fishery, like some species-at-risk, contributing to economic and ecological impacts. Often, escaping from entanglement is not possible for marine mammals, resulting in extensive injuries, starvation, and possible death. Injury from fishing gear may also deter their ability to reproduce and feed. 

Although gear may appear to settle on the seafloor, ocean currents can quickly demobilize the derelict marine debris. Dynamic ocean conditions and lost gear can damage ecosystems developed on the bottom of the ocean. Lost gear lodged in hard or soft bottom is often argued to provide additional habitat to marine life; however, studies show that removing ghost gear provides greater long-term benefits than leaving the gear in the ocean environment.

To retrieve ghost gear and reduce the negative impacts on our marine environment, it is important to know where to look. There are several different methods, some of which use new technology or local knowledge held by fishers and their communities.

Internationally, several web applications exist to report marine debris found in our oceans. Some of these include the  Ocean Conservancy , the  European Environment Agency ,  Australian Marine Debris Database ; however, measures to collect lost fishing gear data have been led by the  Global Ghost Gear Initiative  (GGGI). The GGGI Reporter app allows the public and industry to record lost, or found, fishing gear. The publicly available data can be used to inform retrieval on local, regional or global scales.

Aiming to collect as much gear as possible, Coastal Action is working with local fishers to retrieve gear lost at sea by bottom towing. 

It is not an easy task to retrieve gear on the bottom of the seafloor. Grapples are modified anchors that fishers design for towing along the seafloor to snag gear that might be lying on the bottom. These are designed for different kinds of bottom conditions. A span drag can be easily towed across a muddy or sandy bottom, while a cylinder-like grapple is more desirable for moving in between rocks and hard bottom. During retrieval missions, grapples acquire ghost gear off the seafloor that may be more difficult to obtain than with a traditional anchor. 

Out at sea, the fishers put a grapple in the water, dragging it behind their boat until it snags on gear at the bottom. Gear that will pull could be anything from rope to a lobster trap to an aquaculture net and anything in between. 

While removing ghost gear from the ocean provides ample benefit to marine life, the information about the gear retrieved can be used to develop and implement sustainable management practices. 

A vital component to retrieval missions is releasing the by-catch from retrieved gear. The information can give researchers and policy-makers insight on marine species protection measures. 

By-catch is considered any marine animal that is unintentionally captured in gear during fishing activity, and in this case, ghost gear. By-catch can be the target species of the fishery or non-target species. For target species such as lobster, lost traps can indiscriminately capture by-catch for long periods after the trap is lost due to the  ghost fishing cycle.  This cycle can have several negative environmental and economic impacts. For example,  baseline assessment research  from this project showed that ghost gear in southern Nova Scotia resulted in an estimated commercial loss of target species upward to CAD$172,000 annually.

To address the many unknowns about ghost gear, retrieval fishers and crew examine, count and document by-catch released and gear retrieved to further understand how ghost gear behaves in our environment.  

Fishers have contributed to selecting our target areas, designed grapples and equipment, adapted and strengthened methods, and showed solid collaborative communication. This stewardship component of the project has been a key strength, which will have lasting benefits. Partnerships with Dalhousie University, Ocean Tracking Network, and Clean Annapolis River Project have resulted in accomplishments such as retrieval across three different lobster fishing areas, publication of a scientific article, five shoreline cleanups and 12 days of testing novel gear detection methods. 

Ghost gear is an inevitable problem with fishing of any kind. To help reduce the impact that ghost gear has on our natural environment, implementing sustainable solutions through preventative and mitigative strategies are small, but mighty, steps to reducing the presence of ghost gear in our oceans.

For more information on the project and other Coastal Action initiatives, check out our  website  and social media:  Instagram ,  Twitter  and  Facebook .  

Interested in helping solve the problem of ghost gear? Check out the resources below for more information on ways to get involved in your community.  

•  Global Ghost Gear Initiative 
•  Fisheries and Oceans Canada Ghost Gear Fund 
•  Great Shoreline Cleanup