The Monster 11-Ton Net That Threatened Hawaii’s Coast
June 8, 2015 - The oceans are filled with trash, and some of it is especially damaging to sea life. An 11-ton fishing net drifting near the northern Hawaiian Islands tore coral and trapped sea life, including green sea turtles and reef sharks. Scientists who regularly scour the waters for removable trash tried for more than a year to find this garbage behemoth. They finally located it last year but had to cut it into several pieces in order to lift it out of the water. Mark Manuel, of NOAA’s Coral Reef Ecosystem Division’s Marine Debris Project, describes the complicated removal of this fishing net and 57 tons of additional dangerous trash during the NOAA-led group's 33-day mission in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
Read more about NOAA efforts in battling an 11-ton fishing net found off of Hawaii's coast.Watch divers free a green sea turtle caught in a fishing net.
Transcript
MARK MANUEL, OPERATIONS MANAGER, NOAA FISHERIES CORAL REEF
ECOSYSTEM DIVERSION:
The net that we found was first located in September 2013. The
sheer volume of it is pretty astounding.
All in all, it took about four whole days of cutting and prepping and towing
to get this single net, which weighed approximately 11.5 from the reef back to Honolulu for
recycling processes.
The focus of our survey and removal efforts is to mitigate
the threats that these nets and or other derelict fishing gear have towards our endangered Hawaiian monk seals and as well our threatened green sea turtles
here.
And essentially these shallow coral reef environments just act as a entrapment for these nets and plastics that are just flowing through the
ocean. The video you see you have in one case two
free divers methodically swinging a cargo net under a portion of this large monster
net that we found and helping to prepare it for transport back to our NOAA ship. From a
global perspective, it may be a small net but in a capacity of the Hawaiian
Islands and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands with pristine coral reefs and uninhabited islands in the thoughts it’s
a pristine ecosystem that these nets can essentially compromise and both
destroy reefs as well as potentially killing other mobile wildlife.
The pile of debris on
the back of that NOAA ship and basically that is the fruits of our labor—that’s
the 57 tons of primarily nets and plastics that we removed over the twenty-one
operational days. By the time we get to it it's essentially too late if you
think about it. It needs to start with education outreach and getting stories
like this out to the public and to fishermen and to know that, you know, hey, you
could be thousands and thousands of miles away and it may not be your home but
you may be impacting someone else’s home and their livelihood.