Abandoned gill nets pose peril in Sound

By Ian Ith
Seattle Times staff reporter

MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES Jeff June, leader of the crew from Natural Resources Consultants of Interbay, which has helped develop cleanup standards, reaches to help pull a recovered net onboard.

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ABOARD THE TRAWLER BET-SEA — The snarl of derelict fishing net came up from Shilshole Bay like brown hag's hair, yanked from a sunken barge where it had been a killing machine to the sea life of Puget Sound.

Foot by foot, the crew of the Bet-Sea hoisted the monofilament dreadlocks onto the deck Thursday, and with the tangle came the low-tide stench of the forgotten net's many victims. Barnacled crabs, some still clinging to life. Shellfish and shrimp, hopelessly tangled and doomed. In other nets, the crew has found sea birds, and a harbor seal who made its fateful last dive maybe only days before. Then something even more ominous came up with the net, causing the Bet-Sea's crew to halt their hoist. A diver's belt, its buckle still shiny enough to glint in the noonday sun, was wrapped tight in the plastic mesh.

"Now that's a little spooky," said Jeff June, the leader of the crew from Natural Resources Consultants of Interbay. "No, that's real spooky. You got to wonder if someone didn't get tangled in this thing and had to bail out of his gear."

But as the crew cut the belt free from the old net, and shoved the mess into a trash bag, it knew that at least there was one less derelict net to keep killing sea life and endangering divers.

Thursday the crew was midway through a weeklong cleanup of the waters off Seattle, Vashon Island and Everett. Just this week alone, it has cleared the Sound of about a dozen enormous gill nets. If they were spread out fully, they would cover more than 30 acres.

Environmental issue

The dangers of abandoned fishing gear has only become a prominent environmental issue in the past decade or so. And though Natural Resources Consultants has spent a few years developing removal techniques in Northern Puget Sound, this is the first time a concerted removal effort has been made this close to Seattle.

The project is overseen by the Northwest Straits Initiative, a conservation group based in Skagit County. But the $15,000 price tag is being paid by King County's Wastewater Treatment Division as mitigation for a new sewer-treatment outfall pipe being installed on Vashon Island.

Marine ecologists have grown increasingly aware of discarded nets as interest in habitat on Puget Sound's near-shore areas has also increased.

	MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES Bones from a harbor seal mixed with bird parts and fishing gear retrieved from the Sound sit on the floor of the boat.

Northwest Straits started developing a program to remove the gear when it noticed that a lot of other groups were eager to donate money to pay for it. It has set up a system to encourage divers and fishermen to anonymously phone in the locations of lost nets, and has drawn up maps to mark places for future removals.

This year alone, the effort has pulled 156 gill nets and 482 crab pots from the deep. But the group guesses that's just a tiny fraction of what's out there.

It's estimated that as much as 1,300 tons of fishing gear litters the Sound, and all of it has the potential to be what at least one biologist calls "the marine Killing Fields."

Ever since the net-fishing industry switched to synthetic nets 50 years ago, every lost net is more and more dangerous for fish. They take decades to decompose.

"We've found nets dating to the early '70s, yet they're still down there doing damage," said Tom Cowan, the director of Northwest Straits. "Basically they continue to do what they were designed to do, which is capture and kill fish."

Under one net found off Lopez Island recently, crews found a 3-foot layer of fish, bird and mammal bones, June said.

	MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES Sea urchins cling to a recovered net as it comes onboard. Jack Iotte is at right, Kenny Woodside, center, and Crayton Fenn is at left.

It's not just a Puget Sound problem. Hawaii has had a well-organized program to clean up lost drift nets for years.

For the past 19 Septembers, the Ocean Conservancy, an international group, has hosted gear cleanups all around the world. Last year, volunteers in 91 countries rescued 237 entangled animals, and collected about 53,000 lost fishing lines, 30,000 fishing nets and 28,000 crab or lobster traps.

"It's a serious problem, but I don't think anybody has any estimates on the full extent," said Mark Powell of Bainbridge Island, the Ocean Conservancy's director of fish conservation.

"All we know is what we find, and what we find is mostly on beaches. That's only the tip of the iceberg."

Regulation to slow the abandonment of fishing gear has been nonexistent. The closest the state Legislature has come is ordering a study of the problem to come up with ideas that might help stop the rate of lost nets.

Some groups, like the Ocean Conservancy, support requiring fishing vessels to mark their nets so they can be traced.

Northwest Straits maintains, for now, that its recent efforts are having an impact because fishermen are growing more aware of the harm their nets can cause, and are more willing to report their losses, Cowan said.

"Our attitude is, we don't care how it got there, we just want it out of the water," Cowan said.

Nets cover sunken barges

In Shilshole Bay, the focus Thursday was on two sunken barges, both draped with layers of nets.

A team of three divers took turns donning wet suits and 70-pound weight belts to drop 70 feet to the bottom and laboriously cut the nets free with serrated knives.

The Bet-Sea supplied the air through a snaking yellow-and-black air hose, and a radio to the surface allowed the divers' breathing to be amplified through a loudspeaker, so everyone on deck could know each diver was still alive.

It's hard — and dangerous — work. In 1998, a recreational diver, Megan Reehling, was working to remove abandoned recreational fishing line during an Earth Day event in Tacoma when she became tangled and drowned.

The danger is why Cowan's group has managed to get so much attention — and donations — lately. It and the private Natural Resources Consultants are among the first to develop safety protocols and standard procedures for every cleanup.

But Cowan's group also can thank the photogenic drama of pulling nets from the water so they will "ghost fish" no more.

"This is something people can relate to," Cowan said. "People can relate to fish. They can relate to nets. And they can relate to the damage that they do."

Aboard the Bet-Sea, Steve Franklin of Bend, Ore., a muscular diver with salt-and-pepper stubble, found a small Dungeness crab still moving in the tangle of recovered net. With surprising care, he sliced away the green plastic fibers from the crustacean's weakened legs.

"He's not doing too good," Franklin said. "But if we get all this off of him, he might live."

Once free, he gently dropped the crab into Shilshole Bay with a splash.

Ian Ith: 206-464-2109 or iith@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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