Derek Sheppard	Video Editor
Tara Garcia Mathewson	Videographer

 

KINGSTON —

An old gill net covers the seafloor like a blanket. Small forage fish swim through its holes untouched — but a baby seal is not so lucky. When Jim Norberg and Jake Johnston dive down from the Twila Dawn to recover the lost net, they find the seal, dead and still bleeding.

Casualties like this are far too common throughout the Puget Sound because of gill nets that keep fishing long after boats have lost them. Norberg and Johnston are part of the Northwest Straits Derelict Fishing Gear Removal Program. On Thursday, they dove in Apple Tree Cove off Kingston. They and others have been have been pulling up nets — as well as the sea life they’ve trapped — in the waters of Puget Sound since the end of July.

The Northwest Straits Commission, a nonprofit conservation group created by Congress in 1998, started a shadow of the current program in 2002 to recover fishermen’s lost gear. Operating from one small grant to another, the group was only able to have one boat working part time.

“At that rate we were going to be at this for probably 15 years or more,” said Ginny Broadhurst, director of the Northwest Straits Commission. “We knew we needed to get the gear out of there sooner because every day it’s in there it does more damage.”

It wasn’t until this summer when the group had the resources to really get to work.

Federal stimulus money to the tune of $4.6 million, which the group received in July, has turned the Northwest Straits Derelict Gear Project into a full-time effort with four boats and 11 to 12 paid divers. The organization’s goal now is to remove 90 percent of the estimated 4,000 nets sitting in Puget Sound by December 2010.

The Northwest Straits Commission’s proposal survived intense competition, becoming one of only 50 funded projects in the country. Broadhurst said there were more than 800 proposals.

Tom Cowan is the project manager for the derelict gear removal program and a former director of the Northwest Straits Commission. He said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, which awarded the grants, realized the environmental impact the nets were having.

Cowan estimates that over the last 30 years, nets have been responsible for the casualty of 30,000 birds, 110,000 fish and almost 2 million invertebrates.

“All of this marine life is really important for the ecosystem,” Cowan said.

Over the last three months, four full-time boats and dive crews have recovered almost 600 nets, mostly from the San Juan Islands.

“This is one of the few environmental projects I’ve worked on where you can see you have an impact,” said Jeff June, field manager for the project. “We can measure the amount of habitat we’re restoring.”

June estimated that the net Norberg and Johnston were able to remove on Thursday has been on the seafloor since the 1970s. It has had three decades to trap fish and underwater mammals as large as gill sharks, which measure as long as four feet, and porpoises. It’s also made this strip of ocean floor uninhabitable.

But once the nets are removed, the graveyard turns into a thriving habitat.

Steve Sigo, the skipper of Twila Dawn, has been fishing with his family since he was 12. This year, “fishing for nets” has opened his eyes to what it really means when gear is lost.

“I wouldn’t have thought they do as much damage,” Sigo said. “I wouldn’t have thought they keep fishing like they do.”

The net Johnston and Norberg were pulling up on Thursday was about 180 feet long.

The four crews will continue working to catch these “ghost fishers” throughout the winter depending on weather and currents. The stimulus money is allowing them to work every day possible for the next 13 months and have a direct effect on the undersea environment.

“As soon as we pull it out of the water there’s an immediate benefit to the ecosystem,” Broadhurst said.

Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/nov/13/under-water-old-nets-are-silent-killers/#ixzz0X4O17kT2