It just keeps on fishing, and fishing, and fishing. and …

Crew members lift recovered gear from a skiff to the main deck.

     Over the past few years several articles have been published online and in other media about people rescuing whales tangled in fishing gear. You have to cheer for those people, for sure, but also try to find where that fishing gear, much of it discarded overboard by the world's fishing fleets. comes from. The problem isn't sporadic, it's massive and ubiquitous.
     In August of 2010, I spent the better part of a month in the Pacific gyre ostensibly attempting to quantify the amount of plastic in the ocean. By pure bulk and weight, most of what we recovered was discarded fishing gear, ghost nets pitched overboard that continue fishing into eternity.
     Given the recent publicity I thought it might be interesting to show the gear we found and collected. Mind you this is netting and rope and buoys that had outlived their usefulness or become so hopelessly damaged in one way or another that fishermen just pitched it overboard where it can float and keep fishing for centuries and entangling uncounted whales and other ocean critters in their tentacles.
These photos were taken during our 2010 trip.


















Further reading

Tangled whale freed by Alaskans Thanksgiving Day 2018 Anchorage Daily News
Report finds 700,000 tons of fishing gear discarded and floating in the ocean
A single discarded net can keep fishing for centuries — Natural Resources Defense Council
Pacific garbage patch made mostly of fishing gear — National Geographic

Watch a whale show appreciation after being freed from fishing gear.



You can find other stories by searching "whales rescued from tangled fishing gear"