On Friday, February 26th, the NOAA Marine Debris Program and its partners held an event in Waretown, New Jersey, to highlight an exciting derelict crab pot removal effort in Barnegat Bay. The event highlighted a project, led by the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey and supported by a NOAA Marine Debris Program Community-based Marine Debris Removal grant, which is working to identify, retrieve, and inventory over 1,000 derelict crab pots from Barnegat Bay, N.J.
Covanta partnered with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey to provide two bins for collecting the retrieved derelict gear, to then haul and dispose of at their waste-to-energy facility. Covanta is part of Fishing for Energy, a partnership between the NOAA Marine Debris Program, Covanta, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Schnitzer Steel Industries. Through this unique partnership, bins to collect old, damaged, and derelict fishing gear have been placed at 44 ports in nine states and over 3 million pounds of gear have been collected and recycled.
The event offered an opportunity for media, congressional staff, and interested local residents to see first-hand how this project works to improve New Jersey waters. These types of events are important to raise public awareness of the marine debris issue and educate local communities about what can and is being done about it.
Although no article has been written about it, the Apostle Islands Sport Fishermens Association wants to thank NOAA for their support of the Ghost Net Project that AISFA, Wisconsin Sea Grant, and The Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Commission launched last year to find and remove derelict fishing nets from the Wisconsin and Michigan waters of Lake Superior. We have distributed 750 Ghost Net marking kits in Wisconsin and Michigan to charter captains and sports fishermen to mark derelict nets they run into, and instructions who to contact for their removal. In addition, other educational videos about safety around nets, and better net anchoring practices have been produced. A big thanks to your program!