Removing Ghost Gear From Rhode Island Waters

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Rhode Island has an active commercial and recreational fishery, and fishermen have reported thousands of abandoned traps and piles of ghost gear near Rhode Island fishing ports and coastal waters. To explore this issue, the CFRF mapped ghost gear locations using fishermen’s knowledge and underwater video cameras in Narragansett Bay, and this initial project revealed the extent of the problem. In Narragansett Bay, ghost gear is often caught in trawl nets and discarded at the end of trawl lines, damaging fishing nets and leaving piles of abandoned gear in channels. Other ghost gear hotspots in Rhode Island are located around islands popular for commercial fishing, recreational boating, and diving activities.

After mapping ghost gear hotspots, the CFRF created a plan to remove ghost gear from Rhode Island waters and is now implementing the plan to help reduce ghost gear in Narragansett Bay. This project trains fishermen to safely remove gear and combines best practices with local knowledge and skills. Our target locations for ghost gear removal so far have been guided by the results of a side scan sonar survey of Narragansett Bay conducted in 2023 by CSR Geosurvey, which identified 2,200 ghost traps.

We began our first season of removal in 2023 and removed over 4,000 pounds of ghost gear. We continued ghost gear removals in 2024, which brought the total ghost gear removed to over 10,000 pounds! Additional removal efforts are planned for 2025.

Narragansett Bay is a dynamic habitat that experiences active tidal action, and the bay’s currents and circulation patterns can result in changing sediment deposition. As a result, previously located target locations for ghost gear removal may have shifted. In addition, the bay supports both fixed and mobile commercial fishing activities in a relatively small area, which makes it especially susceptible to fishing gear interactions. It is difficult to evaluate the percentage of ghost gear we have removed or the rate of reaccumulating ghost fishing gear into the area. To address these issues, we are conducting additional side scan sonar surveys in 2025 and 2026 to update ghost fishing gear targets for removal in Narragansett Bay, support other funding for removal activities this year, and evaluate the success of our previous removals in reducing ghost gear in Narragansett Bay.