PROVINCETOWN – Work is underway by members of The Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown to clean up lost, abandoned or derelict fishing gear from Cape Cod and Massachusetts Bays.
The organization was awarded a $95,000 grant through NOAA’s Marine Debris Program to survey likely areas where fishing gear is expected and work with commercial lobstermen to identify, remove, document and properly dispose of lost gear from January through April.
So far, workers with the marine debris project have conducted sonar surveys off of Long Point in Provincetown, Pamet River in Truro and will continue to do it in areas off of Chatham, Monomoy, Nauset inlet and the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal.
Once the targets have been identified from the sonar surveys, there will be commercial divers that will take underwater pictures of some of the gear located.
“All of the live or dead creatures that we’ll find in these traps will be counted and photographed, and then anything that is still alive will be released back into the sea,” said marine debris project coordinator Laura Ludwig.
Then, the center will use their partners with lobster vessels who will attempt to retrieve as much gear as possible.
Primarily, the center has been finding lobster traps so far.
Ludwig said that they would like to return the gear back to its owners.
“This gear is not cheap and these people would love to recover some of their lost traps and so in past projects we have been able to return dozens of lobster traps to their rightful owner, who have been looking for them all along but just didn’t know where they were,” said Ludwig.
Previous efforts in 2013 and 2014 recovered more than 16 tons of gear including 660 lobster traps, half of which were returned to owners.
The recovery is expected to last until April 30.
By JUSTIN SAUNDERS, CapeCod.com Newscenter
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