The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) gave an overview of the department’s Ghost Gear Program to the Newfoundland Aquaculture Industry Association and provided an update on the program’s progress.
Beth Ann Hawco, Regional Ghost Gear Coordinator with Fisheries and Oceans Canada N.L. Region, highlighted the program’s achievements up to the end of 2023. Given that projects are still ongoing, Hawco said the updated numbers are usually released a few months behind. DFO tracks their gear retrieval by two metrics — kilometres of rope retrieved and tonnes of gear retrieved, excluding rope.
The department also tracks the units of gear that were tracked back to their owner as well as the amount of gear that was returned to their owner. Any unclaimed or relinquished gear, according to Hawco, is recycled, upcycled or safely disposed of.
“In terms of rope retrieved, from a Canada perspective, it was 812 kilometres of rope and 2,178 tonnes of retrieved gear, which includes fishing gear and aquaculture debris,” said Hawco. “Gear matched to the owner was 3,585 and gear returned to the owner was 2,526.”
The latest Ghost Gear statistics on the DFO website are currently recorded until August 2023. In the last few months since then, DFO has officially retrieved an additional 219 kilometres of rope and 268 tonnes of gear. A total of 570 units of gear have also been matched to harvesters, 98 of which have been returned to its owner.
Looking toward the future, Hawco said DFO is looking to assist in modernizing Canada’s fishery and aquaculture sector and changing regulations to prevent future ghost gear.
“It would include continuing to improve on the fishing gear reporting system that was developed and looking at sustainable gear innovations that help reduce gear loss,” said Hawco. “There are four pillars of activity that our project has supported. One is the retrieval of gear. Then, responsible disposal is looking at ways to responsibly dispose of gear so that it could be repurposed, upcycled, turned into a different product or maybe repaired and returned to harvesters for use. Then its acquisition of currently available innovative technologies, which could relate to gear detection when you’re out trying to find gear, but also gear loss mitigation.”
Hawco also stressed the importance of DFO’s Fishing Gear Reporting System. Since 2020, DFO has mandated the reporting of lost gear through their website, which they want harvesters to keep in mind when they are on the water.
“The department implemented this new system called the Fishing Gear Reporting System in 2021 in an effort to streamline the reporting process and make it easier and more efficient for harvesters to use,” said Hawco. “It’s a site that’s available on any online device that they have, be it a phone, computer or tablet. It has capacities of saving your tombstone data, so they don’t have to enter different things every time they go in… If they subsequently find their gear, they can also use this application to report that it was found. It’s also the system our retrievers use, so we’re able to link a fish harvester that lost their gear to a retrieval program where gear has been found.”
Information about DFO’s Fishing Gear Reporting System can be found at www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fisheries-peches/commercial-commerciale/reporting-declaration-eng.html
