Our
sea-life is in danger not only from the fishermen catching them, but from the
nets that get left behind.
This issue is mostly unknown to the
public, but it is estimated from studies that at least tens of thousands of
marine creatures are killed every year.
Abandoned
nets are capturing these creatures to suffer a slow, painful death. While I enjoy seafood, it isn’t the same for
these animals to die for no reason.
This
serious threat come from fishermen purposefully discarding or accidentally
losing their gear and sailing away. The
nets continue to catch sea creatures long after they are left behind.
Trammel
nets and gillnets are the worst when it comes to ghost fishing, and they
account for one-fifth of all fish caught across the globe each year.
These nets
are made by mesh that captures fish by their gills. The nets may be one to two miles long and 10
to 50 feet high, with weights holding them down and floats on top to create a
solid net.
When an
animal is caught, it isn’t pretty.
Animals’ heads, mouths, fins, or limbs become entangled in the strong
netting preventing them to escape.
This can
cause a problem for animals that need to breathe such as dolphins, because if
they are caught they are certain to die.
The lines on the top and bottom are dangerous enough to cut marine
animals causing infections and loss of body parts.
Ghost
fishing is something that can be easily prevented by conscious care from
fishermen. If the fishermen simply take
the time to properly dispose of nets or retrieve lost nets, the problem would
be eliminated.
The damage
that is caused by ghost fishing is caused by an estimate of 640,000 metric tons
of fishing gear that is discarded in the sea.
This is only about one percent of what fishers use, which is concerning
to think if there was a higher percentage left behind.
The Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is taking the lead in
trying to rid this problem. They are the
ones calling for fishermen to take a larger accountability for their nets. What is asked is that fishers mark their gear
as their own and increase the surface visibility of their gear to avoid
forgetting it in the sea.
Further,
the FAO is calling for more regulations for ghost fishing policies. With such relaxed standards, it is not a
surprise that ghost fishing is a problem we are facing.
There are
numerous volunteers that spend their time in the seas working to cut and remove
these nets from the marine animals’ habitat.
They attach flotation devices to the nets in order to take the nets out
of the water and into their boats. In
five days, volunteers from Healthy Seas managed to remove 75 percent of all
nets from a reef off Makronisos Island in Greece.
If we do
nothing to rid our seas of these nets left behind, they will continue to ghost
fish for multiple decades and even potentially several centuries. The death toll from ghost fishing will only
continue to rise without action.
There are
many ways to help prevent the problem of ghost fishing in our waters. The options range from the simplistic action
of taking care of your own fishing gear, making sure not to discard it or leave
it behind in the waters.
Another way
to help out is donating to organizations that dive into the sea to rid it of
these nets. If you have the skill, you
could even volunteer for an organization to get the nets out of our sea.
This is a
problem that can be solved by intentional care of the gear we use to fish in
order to keep our seas healthy and full of marine life for generations to come.
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