Ghost gear, fisheries waste and the push for better solutions
Fishing gear is designed to catch. That purpose does not stop when the gear is lost.
A net that drifts free of a vessel keeps fishing, an abandoned trap on the seabed keeps trapping and lost lines keep entangling. Beyond the harm to marine life, they damage habitats, and create hazards for navigation and fishing operations by becoming entangled in propellers and engines.
This ghost gear or Abandoned, Lost or Otherwise Discarded Fishing Gear (ALDFG), is one of the most challenging forms of marine litter, adding considerable strain to the Caribbean’s already pressured fish stocks and Endangered, Threatened and Protected (ETP) species such as turtles, sharks, dolphins and rays.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) treats ALDFG as both an environmental and a management issue, noting that improvement requires better systems for marking, reporting, retrieval, disposal and accountability.
REBYC-III CLME+ is helping to address this problem at its root by looking at the wider systems that shape what happens to fishing gear before it is lost, after it is lost, and when it is no longer fit for use. This includes improving how gear loss is reported, how lost gear is tracked, and how fisheries rules and management systems can better respond to the problem over time.
At the project’s March Subregional Workshop on ALDFG and Gear Marking, which brought together participants from Barbados, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, the wider Caribbean and Latin America, discussions moved beyond ghost gear as a pollution issue and focused on the practical responses needed across the participating fisheries. The workshop examined possible gear marking approaches, reporting and traceability systems, and the wider questions of retrieval, disposal, recycling and end-of-life management that must sit alongside any marking system.
Participants emphasised that, in the Caribbean, any successful system must be practical, affordable and shaped by fisher realities, bringing together prevention, reporting, retrieval, disposal, awareness and governance. Fishers understand how gear behaves at sea, why it gets lost, and what practical changes are realistic. Gear may be damaged by weather, cut loose for safety, lost through conflict with other vessels, carried away by currents, or abandoned when there are no clear or affordable disposal options on land. These realities matter because any response to ALDFG must be built around the conditions fishers actually work within.
Ultimately, reducing ghost gear will be about making fisheries management more responsive to what happens before, during and after gear is used as we work together to prevent loss where possible, improve responses when it happens, and ensure that gear no longer in use is properly collected, managed and disposed of.
Follow our social media channels and subscribe to our blog, Fisheries in Focus, to keep up with updates, lessons and progress on ALDFG management, gear marking and other practical interventions being explored under REBYC-III CLME+.
