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Ghost Nets: Why They Keep Happening and What's Actually Working · How To Protect The Ocean

• 0:00
  Something kind of crazy happened to me
• 0:01
  the other day on TikTok.
• 0:03
  I had a video that went viral, a post
• 0:05
  that I talked about FADs,
• 0:07
  the fish aggregation
• 0:08
  devices that were for tuna.
• 0:10
  And some of these fish aggregation
• 0:12
  devices, these FADs,
• 0:14
  were going into,
• 0:15
  floating into marine protectors.
• 0:17
  Essentially, they were lost. They were
• 0:19
  almost like a ghost net.
• 0:20
  And the post went viral.
• 0:23
  At this point of recording,
• 0:24
  I have over 100,000 views.
• 0:26
  And normally, I get like
• 0:27
  200 views, maybe 300 views.
• 0:29
  And it went viral. It went crazy. I got a
• 0:31
  lot of eyes on the profile.
• 0:33
  I got eyes on the podcast, which was
• 0:34
  great. And it was fun.
• 0:35
  I got some interesting comments, of
• 0:36
  course, but it was a lot of fun to be
• 0:38
  able to see that happen.
• 0:39
  And it made me think, you know what? I
• 0:41
  haven't done a ghost
• 0:42
  net podcast in a while.
• 0:45
  And with all of this AI and search engine
• 0:47
  optimization, just to be transparent,
• 0:49
  it's starting to look at, you know,
• 0:51
  podcasts and pages on websites that are
• 0:54
  showing that they know
• 0:55
  a little bit about certain parts of the
• 0:57
  subject. So what I wanted to
• 0:58
  do is cover a little bit about
• 1:00
  ghost nets, what they are, how do we, why
• 1:02
  they keep happening? Why
• 1:03
  do we keep seeing them?
• 1:04
  What's being done to clean them up and so
• 1:06
  forth. And we're going to
• 1:07
  talk about that on today's
• 1:08
  episode of the how to protect the ocean
• 1:10
  podcast, because this is
• 1:10
  where you find your weekday ocean
• 1:12
  news Monday to Friday on oceans. And this
• 1:16
  is your ocean resource. So
• 1:17
  this is what I want to do for
• 1:18
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• 1:21
  want me to get that, or
• 1:22
  you want me to provide that,
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• 1:26
  and say, Hey, you know what,
• 1:27
  I'm going to follow this, just click that
• 1:28
  button, don't tap it, click
• 1:30
  it, whatever you do. And I
• 1:32
  will be in your feed Monday to Friday. So
• 1:36
  you can take a look at that,
• 1:36
  or you can take a listen to
• 1:37
  that. So that's always fun. So follow
• 1:39
  that. And of course, if you want to
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  support the podcast,
• 1:41
  if you feel the need to support all the
• 1:43
  stuff we do, we do the
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  podcast, we do YouTube, I'm going
• 1:45
  to be starting doing ocean decoded live
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  Monday to Fridays. I'm also
• 1:49
  going to be I do things on
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  Tik TOK and Instagram and Facebook and so
• 1:53
  forth. And so if you enjoy
• 1:55
  that and you want to support
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  me, you can go to speak up for blue.com
• 1:58
  forward slash Patreon that
• 2:00
  speak up for blue.com forward
• 2:02
  slash Patreon. Now I want to talk about
• 2:05
  ghost nets because ghost
• 2:07
  nets are really interesting.
• 2:08
  If you don't know what ghost nets are,
• 2:09
  essentially they are nets that have been
• 2:12
  lost at sea. So these
• 2:14
  are fishing nets that have been used and
• 2:17
  maybe lost because of bad
• 2:18
  weather, or maybe they're
• 2:19
  discarded over the boat, but they've
• 2:21
  essentially been lost. And what they do
• 2:23
  is these, these large
• 2:24
  nets are found all over the world in the
• 2:27
  oceans, whether it's in the
• 2:28
  deep sea, whether it's in the
• 2:29
  floating on the top or whether it's in
• 2:31
  the water column, and they
• 2:32
  continue to catch fish, marine
• 2:34
  mammals, sea turtles, other fish like
• 2:37
  sharks and so forth. And they die, they
• 2:41
  can't, they can't get
• 2:41
  out of it and they end up dying, but
• 2:43
  nobody's fishing them because
• 2:45
  it's just, it's a net that's
• 2:46
  just floating. It's a ghost net. And the
• 2:48
  scientific term actually is abandoned,
• 2:50
  lost or otherwise discarded
• 2:52
  fishing gear known as ALDFG.
• 2:55
  It's a huge acronym. It doesn't really
• 2:57
  sound like anything really important, but
• 2:59
  it's something that's, that's really
• 3:00
  important. It's defined as
• 3:03
  gear that continues to catch or kill
• 3:05
  marine life with no one checking or
• 3:08
  retrieving it. And it's a process called
• 3:10
  ghost fishing. So
• 3:11
  ghost nets, ghost fishing,
• 3:13
  go hand in hand. And it's recognized in
• 3:15
  the peer review literature as a major and
• 3:19
  growing contributor to marine plastic
• 3:20
  pollution distinct from other litter
• 3:23
  because it is specifically designed to
• 3:24
  catch and hold living things.
• 3:27
  Now, a 2023 deep sea survey around the
• 3:29
  Azores near Portugal or in Portugal used
• 3:33
  351 dives and 15 years of seafloor
• 3:36
  footage from 2006 to 2020
• 3:39
  and found an average of roughly
• 3:41
  597 items of ghost nets related gear per
• 3:47
  square kilometer on the seafloor. That's
• 3:50
  per square kilometer. It shows that it
• 3:53
  isn't just the surface
• 3:54
  or a coastal problem.
• 3:55
  It reaches the deep sea as well. So
• 3:58
  that's obviously something that we don't
• 3:59
  like to see, but this is something that
• 4:01
  we need to dive into. So why does ghost
• 4:04
  net really matter other
• 4:05
  than just catching fish?
• 4:06
  Well, a study using social media records
• 4:09
  from 2012 to 2023 documented 144
• 4:12
  individual animals across 35 species, 13
• 4:16
  of them were actually endangered or
• 4:18
  vulnerable were entangled in derelict
• 4:20
  gear in the Indian
• 4:22
  coastal and freshwater systems.
• 4:23
  So that's just one study. Now we know
• 4:26
  with the North Atlantic right whale, we
• 4:28
  see entanglements all the time. Sometimes
• 4:30
  we don't see those entanglements and you
• 4:32
  know, the whales will wash up or
• 4:34
  sometimes we don't see them
• 4:34
  at all, but they're entangled.
• 4:35
  And what happens is the nets get caught
• 4:38
  or the ropes get the lines get caught on
• 4:40
  their pectoral fins. And as they continue
• 4:43
  to swim, the lines dig into their
• 4:45
  pectoral fins and it continues to make a
• 4:47
  mark. It starts to bleed. It gets
• 4:50
  infected and eventually the animal can
• 4:52
  die. It can also be see seals and sea
• 4:55
  lines that like the nets around their
• 4:57
  neck. It can cause
• 4:58
  asphyxiation, strangle them.
• 4:59
  It could also cause a lot of problems
• 5:02
  trying to feed or anything like that.
• 5:04
  There are people who roam beaches to try
• 5:07
  and free sea lions and seals with these
• 5:10
  nets around their neck. And unfortunately
• 5:12
  it happens to too many people.
• 5:13
  And of course sea turtle hatchling
• 5:15
  mortality has been directly linked to
• 5:17
  derelict nets and synthetic rope
• 5:20
  entanglement in recent fishing in recent
• 5:23
  field research with over 200 dead
• 5:26
  hatchlings recorded
• 5:26
  primarily trapped in the gear.
• 5:29
  And that was a study in 2025. Now, of
• 5:31
  course, I talked a little bit about deep
• 5:33
  sea impacts, but researchers have found
• 5:35
  that ALDFG entangled in cold water coral
• 5:39
  colonies across multiple regions,
• 5:41
  including the northwestern Mediterranean.
• 5:42
  The Lingeran Sea, England's Atlantic
• 5:45
  Coast and the Azores showing is this is a
• 5:49
  consistent cross sectional pattern rather
• 5:52
  than an isolated finding.
• 5:54
  So this is something that's happening
• 5:56
  more and more in a related study
• 5:57
  specifically examined how abandoned ghost
• 6:00
  neck gear becomes incorporated into
• 6:02
  structural growth of the coral species.
• 6:04
  Dendrophilia, Philia, Dendrophilia ramia
• 6:08
  along Portugal's Atlantic Coast,
• 6:11
  illustrating how litter flies and the other.
• 6:11
  And how litter physically integrates into
• 6:14
  living restructures over time. Now, one
• 6:16
  of the interesting stories of like diving
• 6:18
  stories that I have is I remember diving
• 6:20
  off the coast of the
• 6:22
  Cayman Islands, Big Cayman.
• 6:24
  And I was diving with some older people
• 6:26
  like in their 50s and 60s. They have a
• 6:28
  lot more experience than I do. They were
• 6:29
  in rebreathers and stuff.
• 6:30
  And we were doing a dive start off at 100
• 6:33
  feet. That was our deepest depth. Then we
• 6:34
  started to kind of slowly climb up on a
• 6:36
  reef about 60 days, 70 feet body amount
• 6:39
  and kind of hanging out there.
• 6:41
  And one of the guys was a diver and
• 6:43
  obviously and he was doing something
• 6:46
  around a coral reef and I was like, Oh,
• 6:48
  what's he doing? So I kind of came around to watch.
• 6:48
  He had a knife out and he was actually
• 6:51
  taking off some fishing net gear that had
• 6:54
  been lost. So, you know, these ghost nets
• 6:56
  and there were some species in there like
• 6:58
  some little shrimp and some nematodes and
• 7:00
  some fish and stuff like that.
• 7:01
  So he was actually cutting them off. And
• 7:03
  what was interesting about it is like
• 7:05
  during that time, I'm saying you got a
• 7:06
  picture as both scuba diving.
• 7:08
  He's kind of floating above the reef. I'm
• 7:09
  floating above the reef, probably about
• 7:11
  two feet above him. And we're just kind
• 7:12
  of maybe a little bit more in line than that.
• 7:13
  Maybe it wasn't two feet and where
• 7:16
  there's a bit of a space in between us.
• 7:17
  And as we're watch as I'm watching this
• 7:19
  guy take the ghost net gear off this
• 7:22
  loggerhead sea turtle
• 7:23
  comes right over top of us.
• 7:25
  And he just kind of peaks his head. He or
• 7:27
  she, I don't remember peaks head and he
• 7:29
  starts looking at us and he looks at both
• 7:31
  of us and kind of
• 7:32
  feels like he gave a nod.
• 7:34
  I'm probably exaggerating a little bit,
• 7:35
  but it feels like he gave a nod and just
• 7:37
  kind of came out almost like a, Hey,
• 7:38
  thanks a lot for
• 7:39
  taking this away from us.
• 7:40
  But this is your stuff anyway. So take it
• 7:42
  back to the surface and keep it there,
• 7:44
  which is where we want to do. We don't,
• 7:45
  we want to keep it back at the surface
• 7:48
  because we don't want that to keep coming
• 7:50
  out onto the bottom, right?
• 7:53
  Because that's something that, you know,
• 7:54
  we just don't want to do. Now, one of the
• 7:57
  things that's interesting beyond like
• 7:59
  looking at seeing ghost nets in the
• 8:01
  waters, why it keeps happening.
• 8:02
  So some of the challenges that have been
• 8:05
  identified in some of the research that I
• 8:07
  looked up in the literature. So there's
• 8:10
  also there's an economic cost to the
• 8:12
  fishing industry itself, right? Because
• 8:13
  you lose the nets. It's
• 8:15
  something that's a big problem.
• 8:18
  A 2023 study modeling the English channel
• 8:20
  static gear fishery found real economic
• 8:23
  costs tied to gear loss and ghost fishing
• 8:25
  and found that current biodegradable gear
• 8:27
  designs need improvement before
• 8:29
  meaningfully reducing the
• 8:32
  costs of these types of gear.
• 8:34
  So there needs to be more research in the
• 8:36
  biodegradable gear in case it does get
• 8:38
  lost. It could just biodegrade. It could
• 8:39
  just basically disintegrate into the
• 8:41
  ocean without having problems. Obviously,
• 8:43
  we're not there yet and
• 8:44
  there still needs to be done.
• 8:45
  But look, about 10 years ago when I was
• 8:48
  at the International Marine Conservation
• 8:50
  Congress, there was a hackathon that was
• 8:53
  happening in Malaysia. And I remember it
• 8:56
  was a really cool thing. They had all
• 8:57
  these engineers, all these people who
• 8:59
  like to do these hackathons. And then we
• 9:00
  had a presentation. There were five ocean
• 9:02
  issues that we were dealing with. One of
• 9:04
  them was crab and lobster fishing and all
• 9:07
  that kind of coming up with a fishing
• 9:08
  gear that would reduce entanglement.
• 9:10
  And one of the ideas was to have a
• 9:13
  ropeless or a lineless lobster or crab
• 9:17
  trap. And so what was basically the idea
• 9:21
  that was done in the prototype that was
• 9:22
  done that actually won the competition,
• 9:24
  even though there's other
• 9:25
  issues that they covered.
• 9:27
  They actually had this ropeless one where
• 9:29
  you'd have balloons that would pop up.
• 9:31
  And when you press the button as you want
• 9:33
  to retrieve your gear and it
• 9:35
  would float to the surface.
• 9:37
  Now, when that first came out, people
• 9:39
  were like, "This isn't going to work.
• 9:40
  There's going to be a lot of problems.
• 9:41
  The ocean is pretty harsh. How are we
• 9:42
  going to find it?" All this kind of
• 9:43
  stuff. And we still need to put buoys to
• 9:45
  make sure we can find it and GPS tracks
• 9:47
  and everything like that.
• 9:48
  And there were a lot of problems when
• 9:49
  they tried it out. I remember talking to
• 9:51
  some fishers and they were saying, "Yeah,
• 9:52
  it's really expensive. We don't really
• 9:55
  know if it's going to be working." And
• 9:57
  some of the trials haven't
• 9:58
  really shown that it worked.
• 9:59
  But it gets better and better. The
• 10:01
  technology gets better and better as more
• 10:03
  experimentation happens and as people are
• 10:05
  trying it out. And now there's a lot of
• 10:07
  fisheries in Canada on the east coast
• 10:10
  that are experimenting with this and see
• 10:12
  how much retrieval can
• 10:15
  happen and all that kind of stuff.
• 10:16
  And the gear is getting cheaper and
• 10:17
  cheaper. So we're starting to see some
• 10:19
  headway. So, you know, with biodegradable
• 10:21
  nets, we might see some more headway as
• 10:24
  we move into the future.
• 10:25
  So I think it's good, but it isn't a
• 10:28
  simple fix yet. A 2025 laboratory
• 10:31
  comparison of biodegradable copolyester
• 10:34
  microfilaments against traditional
• 10:36
  polyamide monofilaments tested degrading
• 10:40
  degradation rates
• 10:42
  under accelerated aging.
• 10:43
  But part of an active research effort to
• 10:46
  find materials that break down fast
• 10:48
  enough to stop ghost fishing, but it
• 10:50
  didn't, but hold up long
• 10:52
  enough to still catch the fish.
• 10:55
  But there still needs to be
• 10:56
  experimentation on that one. And in
• 10:58
  economic feasibility research cited in
• 11:00
  2025, synthesis found biodegradable gear
• 11:02
  runs about 30 to 50% more expensive than
• 11:06
  conventional gear on average.
• 11:07
  And a major barrier for small scale
• 11:11
  fishing operations on tight margins,
• 11:13
  particularly in low
• 11:14
  income fishing communities.
• 11:16
  In 2025, experimental study of Norwegian
• 11:20
  fishers found willingness to adopt
• 11:22
  biodegradable gear is highly conditional.
• 11:25
  Right. The fishers will switch if catch
• 11:28
  efficiencies matches conventional gear.
• 11:30
  That makes sense. But as relative
• 11:33
  efficiency drops, adoption becomes
• 11:35
  contingent on whether the other fishers
• 11:38
  adopted too. So it's a little bit of a
• 11:40
  peer pressure thing.
• 11:41
  Meaning individual incentives are likely
• 11:44
  won't alone won't likely drive the shift.
• 11:48
  So that's something that's interesting.
• 11:49
  And of course, local knowledge and
• 11:50
  enforcement gaps are really important. A
• 11:52
  2026 study in Cameron small scale fishing
• 11:55
  marine fisheries used local ecological
• 11:58
  knowledge from fishers and state
• 12:00
  professionals and state officials to
• 12:02
  examine why gear gets lost, abandoned or
• 12:04
  discarded and found that weak enforcement
• 12:07
  of gear registration and marking policies
• 12:09
  means fishers face little to no
• 12:12
  consequences for
• 12:13
  failing to report lost gear.
• 12:15
  So there's a lot of, you know, still a
• 12:16
  lot of problems with some of the
• 12:17
  solutions that are out there, but
• 12:19
  something that's working solutions that
• 12:20
  are being tested within that
• 12:22
  I looked up in the literature.
• 12:23
  So there's systematic evidence for
• 12:26
  recycling. So 2026 systematic literature
• 12:28
  review following Prisma methodology,
• 12:31
  synthesized at 17 peer reviewed studies
• 12:33
  from 2015 to 2025 across marine ecology
• 12:37
  materials and engineering and circular
• 12:39
  economy research evaluating both
• 12:41
  ecological impacts of ghost nets and the
• 12:44
  technical feasibility of recycling
• 12:46
  recovered fishing gear polymers into new
• 12:49
  products using Hawaii as a case model.
• 12:52
  So there have been some successes around
• 12:54
  there. And of course, researchers from
• 12:56
  British Columbia, Salish Sea documents
• 12:58
  active derelict net removal programs
• 13:00
  designed specifically around safeguarding
• 13:03
  habitat and reducing mortality across
• 13:05
  multiple species cited a model approach
• 13:08
  within deep sea ghost net literature.
• 13:10
  So that's nice to see that there are some
• 13:12
  things that are working out. And of
• 13:13
  course, there's still material science
• 13:15
  progress is happening ongoing degradation
• 13:17
  testing of specific polymers represents
• 13:21
  the live edge of material research aimed
• 13:23
  at gear that ghost net
• 13:25
  fish fishes for months.
• 13:28
  So that's not century. So that's good.
• 13:29
  We're starting to see a reduction in that
• 13:31
  by like 100 years, which is great to see.
• 13:33
  So look, the peer reviewed literature
• 13:36
  that we looked up for this study is for
• 13:38
  this episode is consistent.
• 13:39
  Ghost nets is a measurable quantifiable
• 13:44
  problem from the sea surface to the deep
• 13:46
  sea. We definitely know that it's
• 13:48
  definitely a problem. And the fixes on
• 13:50
  the table like biodegradable materials or
• 13:52
  recycling better enforcement are all
• 13:54
  real, but each comes with its own trade
• 13:57
  off that scientists are
• 13:58
  actively working through.
• 13:59
  And we need more progress. We need more
• 14:02
  research on this. We need more pilot
• 14:04
  studies on this to ensure that these
• 14:06
  ghost nets, one can not affect other
• 14:09
  fishes or marine mammals or sea turtles
• 14:11
  or sea birds. I always
• 14:13
  forget seabirds in that last one.
• 14:15
  But also like to be able to have more
• 14:17
  efficiency and less expand, make sure
• 14:20
  they're less expensive so that they'll be
• 14:22
  adopted by fishers. A lot of times
• 14:24
  fishers who use these
• 14:25
  types of nets are small scale.
• 14:26
  They don't have a big budget. Some of the
• 14:30
  major corporations do have those big
• 14:32
  budgets so they could be using this type
• 14:34
  of stuff too. But a lot of the fishers
• 14:36
  don't have it and we need to make sure we
• 14:38
  can get those in those hands.
• 14:39
  So lots of research, more funding and
• 14:43
  more adoption is needed. And there's a
• 14:45
  lot of stuff that we talked about today.
• 14:46
  And I would love to hear from you what
• 14:47
  you think is needed when we look at
• 14:50
  managing ghost nets and making sure.
• 14:51
  And I know a lot of people will say, Hey,
• 14:54
  you know what? We just got to stop
• 14:55
  fishing and reduce fishing in certain
• 14:56
  situations that's going to work in other
• 14:57
  situations. It's not going to work
• 14:59
  because people need to fish. They need to
• 15:01
  their protein source. They need to make
• 15:02
  money for their families. It's not going
• 15:04
  away anytime soon. There are certain
• 15:05
  cases that yet can be reduced to nothing.
• 15:08
  But there's other situations where
• 15:09
  fishing is just always going to happen.
• 15:11
  And we need to make sure that we can
• 15:12
  adapt to that as quickly as possible.
• 15:15
  That's it for today's episode. I'd love
• 15:17
  to hear your thoughts. You can hit me up
• 15:19
  on Instagram, TikTok, wherever you want
• 15:22
  to DM me. You'd also go to speak up for
• 15:24
  blue.com to find out more about the
• 15:26
  podcast that we have beyond Jaws and how
• 15:28
  to protect the ocean. This one, you can
• 15:30
  also follow those when you go to the
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  website. And of course, if you want to
• 15:33
  support me, you can go to speak up for
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• 15:37
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  We do a lot of work here to make sure
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  that we provide you with the resource for
• 15:48
  oceans. If you like that kind of stuff,
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  support me speak up for blue.com forward
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  slash Patreon. I would really appreciate
• 15:55
  your support. I want to thank you so much
• 15:57
  for joining me on today's episode of the
• 15:58
  how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm
• 16:00
  your host, Angelo, and have a great day.
• 16:01
  We'll talk to you next
• 16:02
  time and happy conservation.