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For decades, environmental advocates and fishermen have found themselves in a bind.
Private property rights over fishing gear made it impossible for communities to clean up rope, lines, and equipment that had been abandoned in the open ocean — even as the gear piled up, snaring endangered wildlife and forming floating islands of synthetic fibers.
Starting Jan. 30, however, new state regulations from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) allow local communities to clean up marine fishing gear debris freely, the first step to eliminating what advocates call the “ghost gear” floating in New England’s waters.
Prior to the new rule, fishermen retained ownership rights of all fishing gear still in the water, regardless of its condition or how long it had been left to sea. Any attempt to interfere with or remove that gear by someone outside of DMF or the state environmental police constituted a rights violation. Volunteers and municipalities, meanwhile, could only remove debris that had washed ashore with state agencies’ permission — debris that still piles up by the tons on Massachusetts’ coastlines.
It’s a small change with a whale-sized impact, advocates say, and not a moment too soon. On Jan. 27, researchers found the first recorded North Atlantic right whale death of the year, a four-year-old male that had been fatally injured after getting entangled in fishing gear.
Laura Ludwig is the director of the Marine Debris and Plastics Program at the Center for Coastal Studies, an environmental research and advocacy group based in Provincetown.
Since 2013, the Center for Coastal Studies has worked with DMF to remove more than 100 tons of fishing gear from state waters, helping gather the data to amend the state regulations.
“You can just imagine how many people might have wanted to clean up the beaches of lobster traps that have washed up after a big storm, or rope, or a net, or buoys — and now they can,” Ludwig said. “They just removed a whole bunch of barriers.”
In December, DMF held a public hearing on the proposed new rule. In that hearing, Bob Glenn, the division’s deputy director of Fisheries Biology and Recreational Fishing, estimated that 9 percent of fishing and trap gear gets lost annually. Because 95 percent of modern fishing gear is made with synthetic plastics, the vast majority of that equipment never degrades, remaining in the environment indefinitely and contributing microplastics to the region’s waterways, he said.
The new rule will allow state environmental police and permitted community groups to remove all marine fishing gear that is not “intact” or in good working condition during the open fishing season(s), and will also allow groups to remove abandoned gear after the season closes. Glenn stressed that under the change, fishermen can still retrieve any working gear left in the water during open fishing season.
“What we’re trying to allow here is really the efficient cleanup of any gear that washes up on shore so that it doesn’t put a burden on the landowner or the municipality who may have to clean this up,” Glenn said.
Glenn said that when possible, those performing cleanups should try to return any salvageable gear to its rightful owner or resell or repurpose the gear. To better prevent dumping altogether, Glenn also stressed the need for debris disposal networks, whether they be harbor-side dumpsters or proximity to transfer stations.
In New Bedford, fishermen have few options to dispose of their gear. Last November, volunteers collected 473 pounds of fishing-related debris off the shores of Marsh Island in Fairhaven, according to an analysis by the Center for Coastal Studies.
The New Bedford Port Authority used to provide gear bins for collection and disposal near the city’s piers through a National Fish & Wildlife Foundation grant, but the grant closed out a year ago and the city has not yet found a new source of funding, NBPA Director of Policy & External Affairs John Regan said in an email. The grant paid for a disposal company to empty the bins and move the disposed gear to a transfer facility.
Once the gear is collected, disposal is even more complicated, Ludwig said. Plastic cannot be recycled easily without downgrading in quality — leaving just landfills or incinerators as viable, mainstream options for disposal.
Net Your Problem is a national organization helping fishermen repurpose their unused gear, connecting that material to partner organizations that might have a use for it. The program’s New Bedford location is a warehouse on Church Street filled to the brim with ropes and fishing line.
In December, Ludwig invited artists around the South Coast and Cape Cod to the warehouse to “network” and share the ways they had repurposed fishing gear and other marine debris into their artwork. One of the artists, Elaine Alder, had previously displayed her work outside the New Bedford Whaling Museum, a sculpture titled “The Water We’re Swimming In.”
Ludwig hopes that creative uses like these can at least divert some of the derelict fishing gear away from landfills and incinerators, and artistic treatments like paint or epoxy can help prevent the synthetic rope from shedding microplastics as it degrades.
Her other hope, she said, is to convince fishermen and lobstermen to go back to the olden days of hemp rope and cotton fibers.
“There is no good system that exists for dealing with plastic,” Ludwig said. “The goal would be to rid ourselves of plastic, and that it’s clearly not gonna happen.”
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
