The data collected over 10 years by Indigenous Rangers through OceanEarth Foundation’s GhostNets Australia program revealed that more than 90% of ghost nets washing up across northern Australia originate from overseas. From our latest analysis in 2023 we know that the most frequent type of net is from trawl fisheries (42%), followed by gillnets (34%) and the rest mostly undetermined. We also now know, from work we did with CSIRO, that most of the nets originate from the Arafura Sea – a very important fishing area for Indonesia. The Arafura Sea is rich in nutrients, making it a prime fishing ground that attracts a vast range of activity, from the subsistence fisher to extremely large fishing vessels. For many years it supported high levels of illegal fishing activity until 2015 when the former Indonesia Fisheries Minister banned all foreign vessels and trawl vessels fishing in the area. The causes of gear loss/abandonment are complex and involve overcapacity leading to crowding and gear conflicts.
Ghost Nets Australia developed the Ghost Net Identification Guide in 2014 by working with Indigenous rangers over 10 years. Tens of thousands of net data and samples were contributed to the information in the guide, which has built upon the original WWF Net Kit first published in 2002.
Our Actions: What are we doing about ghost nets?
For over 20 years, we have been at the forefront of ghost net mitigation efforts – from grassroots initiatives to global alliances, reflecting a commitment to change and adaptation. Each year we edge a little closer to our vision of an ocean free from ghost nets.
Ghost Nets Australia began as a regional clean up and capacity building program in Northern Australia in 2004. In its early days Indigenous Rangers rescued of over 400 entangled turtles and removed over 14,000 nets from our beaches and estuaries working closely with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander coastal communities. Our experience led us to seek answers to some critical questions:
- Why do some regions receive more nets than others?
- How long does a ghost net stay in the water before it is beached?
- If these ghostnets aren’t Australian, where are they coming from?
- Who is responsible?
- How does a ghost net move?
- How many animals are entangled by a ghost net? and
- What can we do with all this rubbish?
We worked with research scientists and the Australian Government to answer these critical questions, leading to some important reports and research papers and building the knowledge base that we now rely on.
With this knowledge, in 2015 we began working at the international level to drive regional policy change and collaborative action to stop ghost gear at the source. This started with working with Indonesian fishers and the Government of Indonesia to understand the reasons that people lose nets. From this, our SeaNet Indonesia project worked with coastal communities in the Arafura Sea to strengthen sustainability and livelihoods while also reducing the discarding of nets. This included the first fishing net recovery project in Indonesia using a community cooperative model – the community collected 18 tonnes over 15 months.
OceanEarth Foundation is currently working with partners in Indonesia to scale this program, building on the lessons learned and utilising more localised/ in situ options for net recycling. This will go a long way towards helping achieve our 2030 of goal of no ghostnets coming to northern Australia .
In Australia we are partnering with OzFish to develop and implement a national plan of action to address ghostgear and litter from recreational fishing focused on fostering stewardship, product and packaging design, circularity through recycling.
How do we clean up ghost nets – finding sustainable disposal solutions?
The Indigenous Ranger groups across northern Australia continue to clean up the hundreds of ghostnets washing up every year – it is a huge burden.
We envisage an ocean free from ghost nets. While we are working hard to stop them at the source internationally, we are also developing solutions for what do we do with the tonnes of ghost nets that are washing ashore annually.
The safe and environmentally-sound disposal of rubbish in remote areas of Australia is extremely challenging; currently some ghost nets are burnt in situ while others are taken to local landfill – neither is appropriate.
In 2021 OceanEarth Foundation lead the GhostNets Needs Analysis and Feasibility Study for Northern Australia in collaboration with SMaRT @ UNSW (Sustainable Materials Research and Technology) to explore solutions for recycling or the sustainable disposal of ghostnets. As the nets are primarily plastic, we are working with recyclers to investigate viable solutions for re-manufacturing and creating new products from the collected nets; this would create increased economic outcomes for Indigenous communities across northern Australia. There are many recycling options in Australia and internationally, but for Northern Australia there are additional challenges including:
- Vast distances and limited access to some clean up locations
- Transportation costs are high and ghost nets can be 6km long and weight over 10 tonnes
- After exposure to the elements the plastic is contaminated and breaks down, turning into microplastics
- It can be difficult to identify the plastic type once the ghost net is degraded
- There is not a steady or predictable supply of ghost nets, like there is for household recycling, which makes planning difficult for recyclers.
What are the impacts of ghost nets on marine wildlife?
Ghost nets are deadly. This is not surprising given they are designed to catch fish and this will happen whether or not someone is attached to the end of them.
Research partnerships with CSIRO, University of Queensland and Indigenous Ranger groups have helped us shed light on the biodiversity impacts of ghost nets across northern Australia and more broadly.
Through integrated analysis and field studies, we have been able to identify high-risk areas for turtle entanglement in the Gulf of Carpentaria; to determine the decay rate (half-life) of by-catch (the incidental capture of non-target species), particularly turtles and sharks in a ghost net suspended in the ocean; and an evaluation of which are the deadliest nets.
These findings have been crucial in understanding the impact that ghost nets have on marine wildlife.
Ghostnets with relatively larger mesh and smaller twine sizes (e.g., pelagic drift nets which are a type of gillnet) have the highest probability of entanglement for marine turtles. Catch rates for fine-mesh gill nets can be as high as 4 turtles/100 m of net length. From 8,690 ghostnets sampled we estimated the number of turtles caught was between 4866 and 14,600, assuming nets drift for 1 year. This is an alarming estimate and all the more reason why the countries in the Arafura region need to work together to stop the issue at the source to reduce this transboundary impact on marine wildlife in the region.
Read more about the research undertaken
We need to stop this at the source – and this requires understanding where these nets come from.
The Young Man and The Ghost Net
