Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/S014152/1
International - Untangling the origin and movement of ghost nets in the Indian Ocean to aid management and mitigation
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Dr EJ Hendy, University of Bristol, Earth Sciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Bristol, Earth Sciences
- Science Area:
- Marine
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Pollution and Waste
- Science Topics:
- Nat Resources, Env & Rural Dev
- Conservation Ecology
- Pollution
- High Performance Computing
- Abstract:
- Modern fishing nets are made to last. In contrast to other plastic marine pollution, fishing nets are also explicitly designed to entrap marine life. When lost or discarded these durable nylon, polypropylene or polyethylene nets remain intact and afloat for decades. Consequently, they continue to 'ghost fish' valuable fish stocks and damage critical coastal resources like coral reefs essential for sustaining artisanal fisheries and tourism-dependent communities. The now familiar image of lost or discarded fishing nets entangled with decomposing turtles, fish, seabirds and other creatures, attest to the deadly nature of this marine pollution. Less well recognised is the threat these 'ghost nets' pose to the food security and sustainable economic development of developing coastal nations. In 2015 the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), a cross-sectorial alliance of stakeholders from the fishing industry, the private sector, NGOs, governments and intergovenmental organisations was launched to drive solutions to the problem of lost and abandoned fishing gear worldwide within the UN Global Partnership on Marine Litter. The GGGI has three strategic approaches; build evidence, define best practices and inform policies, and catalyse mitigation solutions. For the Indian Ocean the major local NGO stakeholder is the Olive Ridley Project (ORP; http://oliveridleyproject.org/), the CEO of which is a previous chair of the GGGI 'Build Evidence' Working Group. Our Innovation Project "Untangling the origin and movement of ghost nets in the Indian Ocean to aid management and mitigation" has been co-developed with both ORP and GGGI. The Maldives are particularly vulnerable to this type of marine debris. Over 700 conglomerates of multiple individual nets and other fishing gear were recovered by Maldivian ORP citizen science volunteers between 2013-2017. These numbers represent only the tip of the iceberg in this vast remote region. Nets are not officially used in Maldivian fisheries, indicating that this local environmental crisis has come from far afield in the Indian Ocean, crossing international borders and turtle migration pathways. Clearly the problem needs addressing at the point of origin, but this is very difficult to pinpoint; the Indian Ocean contains a large number of low-income countries and is an extremely active region for international commercial fishing, as well as illegal and unreported fishing activities. Evidence is required to identify which regional fishing grounds are responsible for the ghost gear. It would also be invaluable for both mitigation and conservation efforts to demonstrate the journey ghost nets take, and areas of accumulation, as they drift across the ocean with the currents. In this project we propose to combine state-of-the-art ocean dispersal modelling and visualisation tools developed at Bristol University using one of the fastest and most advance supercomputing facilities in the UK, with data on recovered ghost nets from citizen science projects run by ORP in Thailand, Pakistan, India, Oman and the Maldives to backtrack their likely source within the Indian Ocean. We will modify our modelling capabilities, originally developed to identify the pathways coral larvae take from one reef to another across thousands of miles, applying this powerful tool to instead simulate the oceanic transport of nets. Visualisation tools developed during a NERC ERIIP funded project to map the probability of jellyfish blooms being transported to coastal power plants will be translated here to communicate the statistical likelihood of ghost gear originating from specific regional-scale fishing grounds stranding in the Maldives and other problem areas. The outcome of our collaboration will be strategic targeting of education and outreach efforts at the responsible sector and region by the ORP based on strong scientific evidence that will also be used by the GGGI to support transboundary decision-making and policy change actions.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/S014152/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Innovation
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Innovation Projects
This grant award has a total value of £106,217
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £1,575 | £53,885 | £3,780 | £5,122 | £39,259 | £2,597 |
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