2025 Ghost Gear Removal Surveys
We conducted 7 ghost gear removal surveys in Narragansett Bay from March 4-April 28, 2025. The areas targeted this year are provided in the Appendix. We added one new vessel to our commercial fishing removal fleet and tested new at-sea and processing protocols that improved our data collection efficiency. All traps were tagged with an ID number and then transported to our East Farm office for processing. This year, we successfully removed 269 traps (lobster and conch traps), 4,220 pounds of scrap metal, 1,368 pounds of rope, and approximately 200 pounds of plastic. We also retrieved 12 anchors, 8 car batteries, several anchor chains, and 2 nets. Check out the maps and figures below to see the areas we targeted for removal and the number of traps we retrieved from each!
Area 1. The waters north of Dyer Island, east of Prudence Island and west of Melville.
Area 2: The “Donut Hole”.
Area 3: The waters northwest of Jamestown.
Processing Retrieved Gear
This year, we were able to return 34 traps to their owners. With the high cost of purchasing new traps, the fishermen were very grateful to get their lost traps back. We make every effort to recycle all other retrieved gear. We established new recycling partnerships with the University of Rhode Island Plastics and Textiles Departments that are investigating new ways to recycle fishing gear. A student from URI presented a poster on their research using our fishing gear to make plastic sand construction blocks. The challenge to recycling ghost fishing gear is developing techniques to clean it prior to processing. This partnership not only helps with our goal of recycling all our retrieved gear, but also supports URI students with the materials they need for their research. We also worked with URI Capstone students from the Ocean Engineering Department using one of their 2024 side scan sonar areas to target for removal.
Next Steps
We are currently analyzing the data we collected during retrieval surveys including effort, gear type, location, depth, substrate, trap age, bycatch species in gear (alive or dead), amount and type of biofouling, and status of escape (ghost) biovents. These data will be made available on our website and entered in the Global Ghost Gear Initiative portal.