Researchers search for lobster traps, nets and other ‘ghost gear’ lost near N.L. waters | 24CA News

When fisheries technologist Mark Santos and his staff of pupil researchers depart from the port of Stephenville, N.L., they don’t seem to be searching for lobsters, crabs or mackerels.

They’re searching for “ghost gear” — fishing tools misplaced within the deep, washed away by post-tropical storm Fiona.

“I usually work with gear technology, so actually testing gear and helping clients test out new fishing gear,” he advised The Current‘s Matt Galloway.

“But this ghost gear project came along, and I’ve always had an interest in it, so I kind of took it on.”

“Ghost gear,” which might embody something from items of rope to misplaced crab or lobster traps, has been haunting Canadian waters for years. But after Fiona ripped via the Maritimes final September, the waters surrounding Canada’s east coast turned inundated with extra misplaced loot.

That’s why earlier this yr, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) launched a name for candidates to the Ghost Gear Fund, a federally funded program supposed to wash up the waters. The DFO can also be working to interchange a number of the misplaced tools.

As of Sept. 1, the Ghost Gear Fund has funded 91 tasks for a complete of $26.7 million — together with the Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Resources, an utilized analysis unit inside Memorial University’s Marine Institute, which acquired almost $1.1 million from the fund.

Project lead Santos began their retrieval mission in mid-August. He stated they’re utilizing sonar and remotely operated automobiles (ROVs) to assist get well items of ghost gear.

“In open water, when you start talking about stuff that’s down 60, 70, 100 metres … you’re not getting a person down there. ROV is probably a better option,” he stated.

A burden for fish and fishermen

So far, Santos stated his staff have discovered greater than 2,000 potential targets alongside the shores.

It’s essential to catch issues as seemingly mundane as ropes or a web as a result of “it’s a trap that’s down there that continuously fishes,” Santos stated.

“So either an animal goes into it, dies, attracts more animals and the cycle continues … or it’s a situation of a net that continuously fills with fish, it rots out, sinks to the bottom, and then as it rots, it floats back up, catches more fish,” he stated.

For fisherman like Renny Hickey, ghost gear can also be an costly loss.

“Traps are like $250 a piece, and you have as [many] as 20 lobsters in a trap,” he stated. “You lose one, it could cost a guy … $600 per trap.”

Hickey has been a fish harvester in Newfoundland for 30 years, following within the currents of his father. He stated the quantity of substances he may lose provides up over time.

That’s why he is prepared to volunteer the 39-foot vessel belonging to his son — additionally a fish harvester — to Santos and his crew.

“We chose this boat because it has a large deck, and so it’s going to be beneficial for us if we start getting into a lot of gear,” Santos stated. 

“We have storage space, and space to kind of sort it out and do our sampling, because if we find gear that has specimens in it, we actually have to record what’s in the trap — and that’s a DFO requirement.”

Fishing with tech

The boat additionally offers Santos and his staff area to hold their tools, together with a number of ROVs, all of which have their very own distinctive quirks and advantages.

Three of them are small and manoeuvrable, whereas a bigger one is used to journey via heavy currents. “It has three one-horsepower motors. So we can push through the current pretty well,” Santos stated.

The ROVs are remote-controlled, and they may give researchers a restricted view of the aquatic ground once they’re launched underwater.

“The field of view is not huge,” he stated. “So, I mean, you kind of got to pick an area, pick a transaction, kind of go on it, and then hopefully something comes on in your view.”

The bigger ROV is used to survey the waters and find the particles. Then they will deploy the smaller craft, that are outfitted with a manipulator arm with a “little claw,” Santos stated, to select up ghost gear from the seabed.

Santos thinks ROVs are a better and extra environmentally respectful technique of retrieving ghost gear than the same old technique of utilizing a grapnel, which blindly drags throughout the ground within the hopes of hooking onto one thing.

“Dragging a grapnel across here … will disturb the worms and other habitats, but you’re not going across a coral bed or anything like that,” he stated.

“But with this type of tech, we could actually go across the coral bed and not cause any problems.”