Each year at least 640,000 tonnes of ‘ghost gear‘ — abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear — is added to the rubbish accumulating in our oceans. Estimated to represent 10% of all marine debris, ghost gear mutilates and kills millions of marine animals every year, including endangered whales, seals, and turtles, and compared with all other forms of human-caused marine debris it is four times more likely to impact marine life through entanglement than all other forms of marine debris combined.

Charlie Moores met with Peter Kemple Hardy, Campaigns Manager at the charity World Animal Protection, to discuss the problems of ‘ghost gear’ and the solutions being put in place to tackle a threat that could spell catastrophe for marine ecosystems.

“…It’s not a problem that we can wait to address, it’s a problem we need to address now – compared to other ocean plastics and debris, ghost gear is by far the most dangerous to marine life…”

Ghost Gear | World Animal Protection
July 2018

 

Header image copyright John Moncrieff (used with permission)

• Originally uploaded to Lush Player July 2018