Derelict Fishing Gear - Hopeful success story in Hood Canal!

[nwscubamom]

On a dive in Hood Canal at the end of July, while doing REEF surveys hunting specifically for invasive tunicates, (which we found), my dive buddy Pete Naylor and myself dove a nice wall south of Dewatto Bay. The wall started about 95ft and continued down to about 115ft or so.

Here's a few of the invasive tunicates we found:


But the really cool thing? There were Cloud Sponges on this wall!! I hadn't seen any in ages, so it was a real treat to see them and take pics.



But also on this wall was a derelict gill net, with a bunch of dead tangled up Dungeness and Red Rock crabs, and also hung up on some of the Cloud Sponge colonies. The net was firmly in place, draping down over the edge of the wall down to the bottom. We took some pics and I submitted an online report to the NW Straits Commission's Derelict Fishing Gear program. Removing derelict fishing gear is NOT a task for recreational divers!! Observe, and report! (although we might be getting involved as a dive community in some of the simpler stuff like crab pot removal later on - I'll keep you posted!)



More photos here:
http://nwgeogirl.smugmug.com/gallery/3632575#206967199

So after submitting the report, I heard back NADA. Zippo. Nothing at all. I wondered if they even had received my report. It went on the back burner of my things to follow up on, and just the other night sprang back into the forefront.

I was watching TV - slow night - flipping channels and wound up listening to the Puget Sound Partnership meeting in Edmonds on Oct. 1st. Ginny Broadhurst, acting chair of the NW Straits Commission, spoke to the partnership about derelict fishing gear and how it kills soooo much marine life, and how they're removing it. I decided to contact Ginny about my lost-in-cyberspace report and see if she knew anything about it.

So I emailed her, and she in turn put me in contact with Jeff June, of Natural Resource Consultants in Seattle who does the actual removal work. He said my report was received by WDFW, but it should have gotten flagged as high priority due to the impact on the Cloud Sponges. In any case, he's sending guys out next week to do recon on the net and what it will take to remove it.

And the best part? He said it would be fine if Pete and I came along - although they do the removals using Surface supplied air, we could go down on Scuba and watch the procedure!

Anyway, this has put all sorts of wheels into motion regarding volunteer divers and removal projects for simple, safe things, like crabpots. Volunteers could go down in teams and simply mark (with a supplied float and line) each pot, then the surface work boat can remove the pots using onboard winches. There are several areas that have already been identified as having hundreds of abandoned crabpots using side scan sonar, in Port Susan, boundary Bay, and other areas.

Upcoming dive projects for clubs! I'm excited!

- Janna

[LCF]

I went out with my husband and Laurel LeFever, who is teaching his DM class, to do a search and recovery dive the other day. Laurel regaled us with tales of other recoveries, in particular net recoveries. Hearing the stories just reinforced for me that net recovery is something which should be done with great care, by people who are familiar with the procedure.

Good that they are paying attention to this report. Dsteding was telling me the other day that he had reported nets on Blakely Rock, and that nothing appears to have been done about them at all.

[Sounder]

I went out with my husband and Laurel LeFever, who is teaching his DM class, to do a search and recovery dive the other day. Laurel regaled us with tales of other recoveries, in particular net recoveries. Hearing the stories just reinforced for me that net recovery is something which should be done with great care, by people who are familiar with the procedure.

Good that they are paying attention to this report. Dsteding was telling me the other day that he had reported nets on Blakely Rock, and that nothing appears to have been done about them at all.

I heard there might be a chance that cloud sponges could be on Blakey Rock...

[Zen Diver]

...And the best part? He said it would be fine if Pete and I came along - although they do the removals using Surface supplied air, we could go down on Scuba and watch the procedure!

...Upcoming dive projects for clubs! I'm excited!

- Janna

Wow, sounds very cool to be a part of. Give us a detailed report when it's done. And keep me in mind for removal of other items!

-Valerie

[CaptnJack]

Unfortunately there are nets just about everywhere. Within 8 miles of my house (which is already 2 miles from the water), I know at least 6 dive sites with net remnants. Some I've reported, but they have not been removed.

[dsteding]

It seems like every dive I do away from established dive sites like Cove 2 has some sort of derelict fishing gear on it. Blakely, the 4 mile barges, heck, even Cone Island had a big trawl on it with some dead rockfish tangled up.

I imagine the removal program is completely overwhelmed.

[John Rawlings]

First off - great job, Janna, for reporting this and following up! I'm glad to hear that organized removel of derelict nets continues. I have some sad memories of the devastation they can cause.

Many years ago in my diving career while diving off the Mukilteo Air Force Oil Pier my buddy and I encountered a HUGE net that had drifted onto the pilings near the northwestern end of the pier. It was a couple of hundred feet long and had settled at a point in which it was about 20 feet high against the pilings and trailed out over the bottom down the slope.

I have never in my life seen such devastation. Every foot or so of the net had dead fish and birds trapped in it. There were also dead harbor seals and a sea lion entangled within its web. Of course, all of this death was attracting the crabs in their hundreds, and the spiny shells of the Dungeness crabs were causing them to become trapped as well when they crawled into the net to reach the corpses in order to feed on the remains. It was an absolutely macabre scene as the hundreds of dead animals seemed to be moving due to the crabs struggling to escape.

Since we were crabbing that day, my buddy attempted to pull a couple of the bigger Dungeness from the net and within moments he had part of it entangled on his tank valve. I had to cut him free, and thereafter we maintained a safe distance from it.

I remember the intolerable and utter devastation as if it were yesterday. It was nauseating and evoked a feeling of utter sadness within me. I became an avid opponent of nets at that moment and remain so to this day. I wish that I could shake off the memory because it is NOT a good one. I've heard many people say that every dive is a good one.....not so. This was the worst dive I had ever experienced.

The net was reported , by me as well as other divers that had seen it, and it was removed a couple of weeks later, but not before literally thousands of sea creatures' lives had been uselessly snuffed out. Those who know me know that I believe in the cycle of life - creatures survive by consuming each other - humans need to eat and sea creatures are a source of food. But useless waste is something that I cannot tolerate and will ever accept.

Nets such as these should never be used.

- John

[nwscubamom]

Well, bad news. They went out yesterday to find my net, and couldn't find the wall or the net!!!

And, a storm was coming in, so they had to boogie back on to Port Angeles and they have no more survey time or $$ left for Hood Canal, unless I can go out there and find the exact GPS location of the net. :(

(and I have no boat and it would cost about $300 to hire Don Coleman to take me out there)

So my net is still there.

If anyone has a trailerable boat, there's a boat launch almost directly across from the site (where the old Hoodsport n Dive used to be located) and that's only 1.5 miles away from the site...

- Janna