Ghost nets

[PeterSibley]

Has anyone heard of these horrors before ? Up to 5 km /3 miles long , just floating around the oceans ,randomly killing fish and turtles until they finally end up on the shore ...in this case in the Gulf of Carpentaria,Northern Australia .On one of those special areas where all the rubbish in the ocean eventially accumulates .
http://www.ghostnets.com.au/index2.html?PHPSESSID=7e0e7e17abbb1bd3516ec8b758bd 7c67

[Dick Wynne]

Some years ago inshore fishermen in a part of Cornwall were pulling as many seabirds as fish from their nets, and bagging them, taking them ashore and dropping them down a disused mineshaft, where many thousands of dead birds were found. This was down to the illegal use of cheap monofilament nets close inshore; they are invisible in the water to diving birds. All attempts to get the local authorities to prevent this were stonewalled, due to vested and family interests. The story finally made the national media, but I don't know if the practice has been permanently stopped.

[Ian McColgin]

Ghost nets have been a huge problem since the '70's. Regretably the same national administrations whose policies tanked our own fisheries have kept us out of real leadership in Law of the Sea and actually encouraged the Japanese and other fishing nations that are so rapaciously diminishing the ocean's biomas.

[PeterSibley]

From the site it appears that the nets are pretty international .They must float free for years before fetching up on land,cast offs from trawlers,nets broken free by storm.

Has anyone actually seen one of these at sea ? I never have .

[Clan Gordon]

I don’t know much about ghost fishing in the Pacific, but there is a big problem with this in the NE Atlantic, in the deep waters West of Scotland and Ireland.

About 50 Spanish gillnetters are working there, each using up to 250km of monofilament net. There is reckoned to be about 6000 to 8500 km of net constantly fishing at any one time.

The nets are left fishing unattended and hauled every 3-10 days. The long soak times between hauls in these fisheries result in a high proportion of the catches being unfit for human consumption.

But it gets worse. In the old days, a boat would have sailed from port with the nets she fished and taken them with her when she sailed for home. Not now. Over a series of trips they build up a huge stock of nets in the sea, and leave them there when they sail for Spain with their catch. The boat is far too small to carry 250km of net in one trip.

Of course the net keeps fishing when the boat is away, and stands a high chance of sinking or getting lost in the deep water.

But that’s not the end of it. These boats indulge in illegal dumping of sheet netting. Because the boats are not capable of carrying their nets back to port only the headline and footropes are brought ashore while the net sheets are discarded, either bagged on board, burnt or dumped at sea.

Up to 30kms of net is routinely discarded per vessel per trip. It is not known for sure how long these nets are fishing after they are lost, but some studies indicate that the nets can fish for at least 2-3 years and sometimes even longer.

Well intended regulations might have an effect here. In Scottish waters the carriage of monofilament netting is illegal. So, there is little incentive to keep such nets aboard for the few remaining Spanish boats with any fear of the emasculated Scottish Fishery Protection Agency (all EU fisheries are to be “policed” by an EU force based in Vigo – probably the world capital of illegal fishing).

Since Britannia no longer rules the waves (not even within 200 miles of the UK coastline) all we are doing about it is commissioning research and writing reports – not actually stopping it. If the attached links work they will take you to some reports.

www.bellona.no/en/about_bellona/39952.html

www.neafc.org/reports/international/ docs/deepnet-report.pdf

www.ieep.org.uk/publications/pdfs/2005/ghostfishing.pdf

And finally, the picture in the link below was taken on the Irish trawler INDIA ROSE, which was chartered by scientists to trawl up lost net. She found 300km of lost net in her trip – with the rotting consequences you see in the picture.

http://www.bellona.no/data/b/0/39/95/6_1407_1.jpg

[PeterSibley]

Thanks Clan Gordon, far ,far more than I really wanted to know :( .Much appreciated.At least it gives some understanding of the great mass of abandoned nets ...it's madness !

[skuthorp]

As a species we'll pay the price. The planet will eventually recover. I've been looking at projected population densities in the pacific region in the next 20 years. Man is due for a shock and a massive die-off if not wars over resources. The present mass extinction may yet include the species that precipitated it.
I'd like to see these ships sunk out of hand, but in the big picture they are small beer besides humans out of controll.

[PeterSibley]

I think a cancer is a good analogy , it grows until it kills the body that feeds it ,then it dies too.

[Hal Forsen]

Check out this story;
Long Beach Neptunes Dive club members find and clean up, an illegal gill net at Catalina island.
http://www.oceanhunters.com/Photos/The%20Right%20Thing/The%20Right%20Thing.htm


http://www.oceanhunters.com/Photos/The%20Right%20Thing/gillnetpul1l.jpg



http://www.oceanhunters.com/Photos/The%20Right%20Thing/gillnetseal.jpg

HF :mad: :mad:

[PeterSibley]

good on them ,very well done . :) Perhaps I could convert my boat to catch nets .

[George.]

Has anyone actually seen one of these at sea ? I never have .

I´ve seen bits of them - sometimes attached to bits of turtles, seabirds, etc.

Enough times to make me angry at first, then very sad indeed...