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Problem of Ghost Gear - Fishing

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October 18, 2018

What is the issue?

  • The problem of ghost gear in Indian oceans is getting to be a serious concern.
  • India should emulate innovative solutions from across the world to tackle this.

What are the recent happenings?

  • Ghost gear is any fishing equipment that has been lost, discarded or abandoned in water bodies.
  • The problem of ghost gear has grown from a fishing outcome that people had not heard of to one that is now difficult to ignore.
  • In March 2018, fishermen hauled 400 kg of fishing nets out of the sea in a few locations off Kerala’s south coast.
  • Reportedly, many divers regularly make underwater trips just to extract nets that have sunk to the ocean floor.
  • It covers the regions off India’s coasts, ranging from Tamil Nadu to Maharashtra.

What is the impact?

  • Ghost nets are often ‘ghost fishers’ as ocean currents carry them for thousands of km across the ocean floor.
  • E.g. discarded Indian and Thai fishing nets have been fished out of Maldivian coasts
  • They entangle, injure and drown marine life and damage live corals along the way.
  • The Olive Ridley Project is a U.K. registered charity that removes ghost nets and protects sea turtles.
  • The project, between 2011 and 2018 alone, recorded around 600 sea turtles being entangled in ghost gear near the Maldives.
  • Of this, 528 were Olive Ridleys, the same species that come in thousands to Odisha’s coasts to nest.
  • Other casualties worldwide include whales, dolphins, sharks and even pelagic birds.
  • In 2016, another study found over 5,400 marine animals belonging to 40 different species entangled in ghost gear, or associated with it.

What are the concerns?

  • The analysis showed a huge gap in data from the Indian, Southern and Arctic Oceans, and thus prompted on future studies to focus on these areas.
  • But even after two years, there are still no data pertaining to the extent of prevalence of ghost gear off India’s coast.
  • Data is crucial because the detrimental effects of these nets also spillover into other countries and oceans.
  • The government is currently preparing a national ghost net management policy.
  • But besides ghost nets, the larger concern is the bigger violations wherein large vessels do fishing where they are not supposed to.
  • Unless this is checked, implementing a policy on the management of ghost nets is hard.
  • The consequences of overfishing, using nets of the smallest mesh size, and illegal fishing are far less visible, but are more worrying.
  • Entire fishing communities are affected by these actions.
  • Especially in developing countries like India where the demand for fish keeps rising, the impact is serious.

What should be done?

  • There are numerous innovative solutions to tackle the problem of ghost nets, which India should consider.
  • E.g. in countries like Canada and Thailand, fishermen retain their used nets.
  • These are recycled into yarn to craft socks and even carpet tiles.
  • For the first time in a developing country, a gear-marking programme is being tested in Indonesia.
  • By this, the trajectory of fishing gear, if it drifts away, can be studied better.
  • Outreach and education among fishing communities would also be crucial along with policy-level changes.

 

Source: The Hindu

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