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These divers are trying to make a dent in Maine's 'ghost gear' problem, one abandoned trap at a time

There's a chill in the air on this overcast morning in late September, as Buzz Scott steers his boat, the "Hurry Sundown," out of a Rockland marina and toward the granite breakwater that protects the harbor.

He points to small specks displayed on the vessel's navigation system. They're abandoned fishing traps sitting on the ocean floor. Scientists estimate there are millions of them littering the bottom of the Gulf of Maine.

The plastic-coated wire traps are torn loose from their buoy lines in storms or accidentally cut off by propellers in high-traffic areas and collect at the bottom of Maine's many coves and harbors.

"I think right in here is going to be a gold mine," Scott said. "There’s one every ten feet it looks like on the sonar."

Scott's nonprofit, OceansWide, has been training scuba divers to recover derelict, or "ghost gear," from the seafloor. They've primarily been diving in Boothbay Harbor but are in Rockland for the first time.

Scott tosses a buoy with a small orange flag into the water to mark their dive spot.

Noah Oppenheim, left, and Zach Talmadge, right, debrief after their dive.
Esta Pratt-Kielley
/
Maine Public
Noah Oppenheim, left, and Zach Talmadge, right, debrief after their dive.

"You ready to get cold?" Scott says to his team of three divers.

"You mean warmer?" jokes diver Noah Oppenheim.

Once outfitted in dry suits, air tanks and fins , the divers eventually lower themselves from the side of the boat and into the water — and begin a 30-foot descent to the bottom.

When the divers find a derelict traps, they'll tug a few times on the rope connected to the flag at the surface. Scott then drops a weighted line to the bottom, which the divers attach to the trap. The traps will be hauled up later.

"We could probably work this area for two weeks and still leave some," Scott said. He guesses there are maybe a few hundred traps around the breakwater alone, and potentially more than 15 million abandoned pots in Maine waters.

Diver Zach Talmadge holds on to the line that he'll use to attached to the abandoned lobster traps that he's found on the seafloor.
Courtesy of Noah Oppenheim
Diver Zach Talmadge holds on to the line that he'll use to attached to the abandoned lobster traps that he's found on the seafloor.

That estimate assumes that the roughly 5,000 Mainers with lobster fishing licenses may lose as many as 80 traps a year, he said. Wire pots wrapped with polyvinyl plastic replaced wooden, biodegradable traps in the 1980s, and they've been piling up since.

OceansWide is part of the New England Regional Fishing Gear Response and Removal Team, a recently-formed coalition of organizations that are working to clean up marine debris from the Gulf of Maine and educate the public about the problem.

Many of the groups lead shoreline cleanups to clear marine debris that had made its way to the beach after a big storm. Others work with fishermen to remove ghost traps and large balls of rope and nets from the ocean.

For OceansWide, the focus has been on training more than 300 people how to scuba dive over the last decade.

Many are high school students interested in cleaning up or exploring the ocean. Others, Scott said, are drawn in by his own story. He grew up fishing on Matinicus, but found new opportunities through research diving in the Arctic and elsewhere.

Buzz Scott, founder of the non-profit OceansWide, searches for an abandoned lobster trap just below the surface that divers have tagged for hauling up.
Esta Pratt_Kielley
/
Maine Public
Buzz Scott, founder of the non-profit OceansWide, searches for an abandoned lobster trap just below the surface that divers have tagged for hauling up.

"So I've been able to do a lot of stuff in the last 50 years," he said. "That's what I hope for these guys. Clean up the ocean here, and go off and make the world a better place."

Emily Drappeau learned to dive with OceansWide about eight years ago. The experience, she said, helped her get into college and introduced her to famous divers and oceanographers. She spent this past summer diving in the Puget Sound with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Now, she's pursuing a career in marine biology and policy.

"It's really important as a younger generation moving in to be looking forward, to the solutions, to what we can do," she said.

Drappeau is working on her dive master certification and helps to process the traps for recycling once they're hauled to shore.

About 20% of the traps recovered by Oceanswide are still in useable shape. It can be frustrating sometimes, Drappeau said, to have to leave so many more traps on the ocean floor at the end of the day.

"And just to know that there are more being made, that's a little discouraging," she said. "But it all makes it worth it when we have worthwhile exchanges with lobstermen, who are interested in what we're doing and are looking for ways to help us."

From left to right, Noah Oppenheim,
Esta Pratt-Kielley
/
Maine Public
From left to right, Noah Oppenheim, Emily Drappeau, Buzz Scott and Zach Talmadge, with the derelict traps they've retrieved near the Rockland breakwater on Sept. 25, 2024.

In just about 20 minutes or so, the divers have found and tagged five traps. Once out of the water, the group begins to haul them up to the surface.

The traps are caked with mud and tangled with seaweed. Drappeau opens the trap doors and makes note of the species inside. There are a few lobsters, some oysters, a rock crab and a Jonah crab.

The data are plotted into an app that OceansWide uses to track its own removal efforts. The details will eventually be shared with the Center for Coastal Studies, which tracking ghost gear removal efforts across the Gulf of Maine.

Oppenheim searches the traps for remaining tags that might identify the original owner. This one, he said, was set in 2009, according to the tag.

This crab is among the species found inside the five abandoned lobster traps that OceansWide divers recovered on Sept. 25, 2024.
Esta Pratt-Kielley
/
Maine Public
This crab is among the species found inside the five abandoned lobster traps that OceansWide divers recovered on Sept. 25, 2024.

"Then we contact that individual, talk about where that gear might have been set in relation to where it was retrieved, and then we can understand how gear moves over the course of a decade plus," Oppenheim said. "That will allow us to find more gear, and to prioritize hotspots where it's aggregating in order to make our retrieval efforts more efficient."

Some reusable traps are returned to their owners. Others that can't be salvaged are recycled. The plastic is removed, and the wire cages are crushed and melted down. Scott said some of the plastic is sent to the University of Maine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center, which is studying whether it can be used as material for the lab's 3D printer.

OceansWide is also working with the University of Maine on a predictive model using the data that are collected on these dives, along with anecdotal information from fishermen, to help identify future hotspots for derelict gear, Oppenheim said.

"The scale of the problem is always going to be massive," he said. "But we need to do something."

So far, Oceanswide divers have recovered about 13,000 traps near Boothbay, Matinicus and Gouldsboro. A federal marine debris grant will allow them to eventually expand to Stonington, Jonesport, and Vinalhaven.

Corrected: November 1, 2024 at 8:14 AM EDT

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