River Ghosts
While progress is being made on ghost nets in Puget Sound, gear lost in Washington’s rivers continues to haunt the state’s fisheries.
Text and photos by Marcus Schumacher F 8
OR DECADES a silent killer has lurked in the waters of the Puget Sound in the form of lost or abandoned fishing nets that keep on catching and killing marine life long after they sink beneath the surface. Virtually invisible and indestructible, the nets are a large- scale challenge to conservationists and marine resource managers alike. In 2008, efforts
to remove the
derelict nets got a huge boost when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced a grant of $4.6 million to the Northwest Straits Initiative (NWSI) based in Mt. Vernon, Washington. The grant made it
Since the 1970s, more than two million animals per year, including marine mammals, seabirds, fish and invertebrates, have been destroyed.
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possible for NWSI to remove thou- sands of these “ghost nets” from Puget Sound; clearly there are thousands of such nets on the loose in these waters. Since 2002, NWSI has removed
more than 2,800 nets that would cover nearly 500 acres of the floor of Puget Sound. It is estimated that since the 1970s when much of the synthetic material now used in gill nets was introduced, more than two million ani- mals per year, including marine mam- mals, seabirds, fish and invertebrates, have been destroyed. The destruction to crucial marine habitat remains unquantifiable. Public awareness of the destructive
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