MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION — Annual Report for 1995 



derelict gear might continue to catch marine life. 

 Also, no systematic records are kept on the amount or 

 location of lost gear or the fate of old gear retired 

 from service. As a result, efforts to quantify the 

 amount of derelict gear entering the ocean have relied 

 on interviews with fishermen to estimate accidental 

 loss rates for selected fisheries, and none have at- 

 tempted to consider all relevant derelict gear sources. 



While information on derelict gear and its impact 

 on marine ecosystems is limited, the results of some 

 ghostfishing studies suggest that, for at least some 

 commercial fishery resources, particularly shellfish, 

 impacts could be significant. For example: 



• an estimated 31,600 pots were lost in Alaska's 

 Bristol Bay king crab fishery in 1990 and 1991; 

 assuming each trap caught and killed just one 

 legal-sized crab per year, the annual catch would 

 be 205,400 pounds of king crab; 



• an estimated 1 1 percent of the traps in the British 

 Columbia Fraser River Dungeness crab fishery 

 were lost in 1984; the estimated non- retrieved 

 catch in those traps was 21,000 kg equal to about 

 seven percent of that year's landed catch of Dun- 

 geness crab; 



• 300 metric tons of sablefish, equal to about 7.5 to 

 30 percent of annual landings, were estimated to 

 have been lost in derelict fish traps off British 

 Columbia from 1977 to 1983; 



• an estimated 5 to 30 percent of the lobster traps 

 used off New England are lost annually, and in 

 1978 an estimated 670 metric tons of lobster were 

 caught in derelict traps; 



• lost gillnets observed by remotely operated camer- 

 as and submersibles off New England over a three- 

 year period continued to catch fish, crabs, and 

 lobster and had not completely collapsed by the 

 end of the study; 



• nine lost gillnets were found during a submersible 

 search of about 0.4 km 2 of ocean bottom off New 

 England and 2,240 lost gillnets were estimated to 

 be present in 1987 in 64 nmi 2 at two major New 

 England gillnet fishing areas; and 



• lost gillnet retrieval efforts off Newfoundland, 

 Canada, recovered 148 nets in 20 days in 1975, 

 176 nets in 24 days in 1976, and 16.5 nets in 20 

 days in 1984; the nets recovered in 1975 had 3,000 

 kg of fish and 1 ,500 kg of crab, the nets recovered 



in 1976 had 5,000 kg of fish and 2,500 kg of crab, 

 and the nets recovered in 1984 had no fish or crab. 



Proposed Derelict Fishing Gear 

 Retrieval Project 



In light of the particularly limited information on 

 derelict gillnets and their potentially significant 

 ghostfishing impact, the Commission wrote to the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service's Marine Entangle- 

 ment Research Program (discussed below) on 20 May 



1994 recommending that it support a pilot project to 

 retrieve and examine lost gillnets off New England. 

 The purposes of the project were to assess the 

 amounts of lost netting in major gillnet fishing areas, 

 to determine the types and amounts of marine life 

 being caught in lost gear, and to evaluate the potential 

 for directed efforts to remove such hazardous debris. 

 At the Service's annual planning meeting for the 

 program in July 1994, there was some support for the 

 effort, but it was recommended that funding be sought 

 first from other sources within the Service. 



Therefore, on 27 July 1994 the Commission wrote 

 to the Service's Office of Sustainable Development 

 and International Affairs. At the time, the office was 

 distributing $30 million in emergency financial 

 assistance grants to New England fishermen no longer 

 able to fish because of a collapse in regional ground- 

 fish stocks. Some of those funds were to be used to 

 eliminate fishing pressure on groundfish stocks, and 

 the Commission suggested that funds be used to hire 

 displaced commercial fishermen to test the feasibility 

 of recovering lost gillnets and assessing their impact. 



The Commission received no reply from the office 

 and on 30 November 1994 it wrote to the Director of 

 the Service recommending that it use one of its 

 research vessels to provide ship support for a gillnet 

 retrieval project and that partial funding for other 

 project expenses be provided through the Marine 

 Entanglement Research Program. On 19 January 



1995 the Service's Director replied, noting that the 

 Commission's recommendations had been provided to 

 its Northeast Fisheries Science Center for technical 

 review and cost evaluation. The reply also noted that 

 pending review by the Center and a response from the 

 above-noted office, Service funding for such work 



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