Cleaning Our Coasts and Reducing the Impacts of Marine Debris on Marine Species

Looking back on our Marine Debris Reduction program, we’re proud of the work we completed in 2024 to address the challenges of marine debris, ghost gear, and end-of-life fishing gear. We started 2024 strong by completing our Ghost Gear Identification and Retrieval Project in partnership with the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation, which helped remove over 70,000 lbs of ghost gear and end-of-life fishing gear from Newfoundland's west and southwest coast!

Partners from AHOI, Sparkes Subsea, and the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation collaborating on the retrieval of ghost gear along the coastline.

This project originally aimed to tackle the issue of ghost gear and marine debris in coastal water; however, we worked with local fish harvesters to identify end-of-life fishing gear as a large contributor to ghost gear. With a lack of proper disposal facilities, many fish harvesters had no option but to store old fishing gear on coastlines, which posed the risk of washing into the marine environment and becoming ghost gear. With funding from the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation Ghost Gear Project and partnering with ACAP Humber Arm, a local trucking company, and Clean Harbours Initiative, we collected and responsibly recycled over 10,000 pounds of old fishing gear in the Gros Morne region! This project was successful due to partnerships with local fish harvesters. Their input not only highlighted the practical challenges of gear disposal in western NL but also guided the creation of a system for collection and recycling.

 [Left] A Clean Harbours Initiative trailer loaded with end-of-life lobster traps collected in Gros Morne, ready for pre-processing before NewCo Metals upcycle it. [Right] A local partner retrieving end-of-life crab pots to be transported to recycling facilities.

This work didn’t end once the fishing gear was retrieved. With support from the Fishing Gear Coalition of Atlantic Canada, we sorted over 15,000 pounds of collected gear, separating it by gear type and removing any debris. This tedious work ensured the materials were upcycled into other materials with help from Newco Metals and Recycle on the Rock, initiating circular economic practices in the fishing industry.

AHOI team members celebrate successfully sorting over fifty old and unusable gill nets, which were prepared for transport to Recycle on the Rock for upcycling.

While this project concluded in March 2024, its impact continues to resonate. This work identified the issues that ghost fishing nets and traps pose on marine life, including at-risk species. Ghost nets and ropes pose threats of entanglements to mammals and other marine species, suffocate important bottom habitats, and leech microplastics into the water for animals to ingest. These issues are just some we are aiming to address by removing marine debris through our new species-at-risk project, funded by the Canada Nature Fund for Aquatic Species at Risk.

[Left] AHOI’s Green Team removing a discarded fishing net from the coastline in Gros Morne. [Right] The AHOI team sorting and auditing marine debris collected during a beach cleanup.

This past summer, we jumped right back into marine debris removal! In partnership with Conservation Corps NL, our Green Team cleaned and audited rope, nets, takeout containers, single-use plastics, and other debris from beaches and coastal areas. Since we began our Zero Plastic Waste program in 2019, we have removed 9600 lbs of debris from 33,300 m of coastline (and that’s not including what we’ve cleaned up on the southwest coast after Hurricane Fiona!). This year alone, the Green Team, joined by volunteers and community members, cleaned over 2300 m of coastline in the Gros Morne region and removed over 2,100 lbs of plastic waste, fishing gear, and other marine debris, as seen in Figure 1 below! The continued presence of marine debris on our beaches serves as a reminder of the persistent challenge of marine debris and highlights the positive impact of our ongoing efforts!

Figure 1: Breakdown of the type of marine debris collected by weight in 2024 from beach waste audits over 2300 m of shoreline in the Gros Morne region. The total weight of debris collected is 2136 lbs.

Our work to reduce marine debris didn’t stop there. AHOI conducted 67 ROV surveys in Bonne Bay and St. Paul’s Inlet to look at ocean bottom habitats and the species that live there, such as Acadian redfish, American eel, and wolffish. Along the way, we identified several instances of ghost fishing gear, including an old lobster pot on the ocean floor near Woody Point during one of our ROV drops earlier this summer. These surveys also revealed other ghost fishing gear in various locations in Bonne Bay. We hope to find ways to remove as much of this gear as possible in the coming summer!

Discarded lobster trap found on the ocean floor during an ROV transect off the old fish plant dock in Shoal Brook.

As we look back to all of our accomplishments of 2024, we are so thankful for all of our funders, partners, volunteers, and friends who make our work possible! We’re looking forward to even more exciting work in 2025 as another field season is fast approaching!

If you’d like to learn more about our work, please contact Sydney at sydney@atlantichealthyocean.com