Stewardship
Ghost gear
Ghost gear removal program
This program was officially established in 2011 after one of our groups of divers found an abandoned gill net on one of our dive sites. It took 3 weeks to get a break in the weather before we could remove it. In that time it had snagged and killed many marine animals like fish, crabs and even birds such as cormorants. It prompted us to write an outline that could be used to report and remove lost fishing gear. In cooperation with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and the local gill net association we created a system by which the fishermen must report a lost net, DFO will register it and tell us, so we can remove it. The program has led to reporting the loss of nets a mandatory condition of commercial fishing licenses
The results
In the time that this program has officially been running we have successfully removed 7 full or partial gill nets, commercial & recreational prawn / crab traps, and our divers continue to bring up lost recreational gear such as flashers, hooks, lures, lead weights etc. We also saved countless fish and invertebrates caught in nets and lines and assisted in the freeing of a humpback whale calf. In October of 2016 we managed to hand a letter pleading for a national program to the Liberal Party of Canada member Stan Sakomoto and the Right Honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In 2020 the federal gouvernment announced an 8.3 million dollar annual fund to create a national program to deal with ghost gear. For us this is the legacy we wanted.
The rewards
The ultimate reward was that from 2017 to today not a single gillnet was snagged due to our proactive approach to inform gillnetters about potential sites that risk snagging nets. in 2017 we received a Coastal Ocean Award for this program. Many thanks to all who have made this program such a success !
IT IS NOT AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO START REMOVING NETS YOURSELF, BUT JUST FOR INFORMATIVE PURPOSES.
Here are a few video links to net removal events ran under the program:
Gill net removal dive site “Kyen Point”
Gill net removal dive site “Jupe Rock”
WARNING: DIVING AROUND NETS IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND SHOULD NOT BE DONE BY UNTRAINED INDIVIDUALS.
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