Newfoundland and Labrador’s Marine Institute Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Resources (CSAR) is on a mission to clean up and recycle lost, abandoned or otherwise discarded fishing gear from the sea floor off the island’s west coast.
According to project lead Mark Santos, a fisheries technologist at CSAR, the funding came about in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, which devastated areas of Atlantic Canada, ruining numerous wharves and casting hundreds of pieces of stored fishing gear adrift.
“It happened that the fishing industry was stopped at the time. A lot of harvesters around small communities have all their gear stored right on the edge of the ocean on wharves and stages, and when the storm came, it took a lot of that stuff and dumped it in the ocean,” said Santos.
“What we want to do is try to get that stuff out of the ocean before it starts becoming ghost gear.”
The project has been set up in three stages. The first, a community engagement, sought input from harvesters and Indigenous groups to understand how the storm affected them and whether they lost gear. From there, the second phase of the operation involved using side-scan and multibeam sonar to detect ghost gear in the area from Cape St. George to St. George’s.
“We’ve identified over 2,000 potential targets,” said Santos. “Some of them could be rocks. When you look at a side scan and it gives you an image, you click on it and know it’s an anomaly — it’s something different that’s on the bottom that you’ve identified as a target, but we really won’t know what it is until we confirm it with other cameras or ROVs (remotely operated vehicles). But, even if 50 per cent of that is traps, there’s a lot of gear in the water to get out.”
Santos and his team, comprised primarily of three Marine Institute students, local harvesters and Indigenous partners, are embarking on the third phase of their operation, venturing out to retrieve as much of the identified gear as possible. Armed with FIFISH ROVs, an advanced omnidirectional underwater drone equipped with specialized grapnels, the team aims to delicately remove traps from the ocean floor without disrupting the marine ecosystems that surround them.
“We’re trying to do it a little more smart where we will cause less devastation to the ocean bottom, as well,” said Santos.
Any gear found by the team will be taken to a facility set up in partnership with the Fishing Gear Coalition of Atlantic Canada in St. George’s, where all the materials of the traps — wood, plastic and metal included — will be recycled for future use. Santos also encourages harvesters with old, derelict traps and other gear to bring their gear by the facility for recycling as well.
“Other harvesters that have old gear sitting around their properties right now; DFO (the Department of Fisheries and Oceans) also wants to get rid of that stuff, because it’s a potential risk of becoming ghost gear if it’s swept out to the ocean in another storm,” said Santos.
“We’re giving them a more reasonable option and a more sustainable option where they can actually get rid of this stuff responsibly.”
Going into the third operational phase, Santos is optimistic that even if he and his team don’t track down all 2,000 of their potential targets, they will still find a sizable amount of ghost gear.
“Are we going to be able to identify all 2,000 targets? Probably not. But we’re going to attack as many of them as we can,” said Santos. “That’s when we’re actually going to start hauling stuff out and making a difference at that point. Right now, it’s all techy stuff where we went out and played with a bunch of toys, but the real fun begins now when we start hauling gear out, start to cut it up and actually feel like you’re doing something.”
Anyone with fishing gear they wish to get rid of in the St. George’s area can contact Mark Santos at Mark.Santos@mi.mun.ca to recycle their equipment.
