Maine Fishers Haul in Tons of ‘Ghost’ Gear
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
How OceansWide Removes Abandoned Lobster Traps for Upcycling
When Campbell “Buzz” Scott started his scuba diving and remote-operated vehicle (ROV) piloting classes years ago, he was hoping to inspire the next generation to fall in love with the ocean like he did. But as he surveyed the bottom of the Maine coastal waters with his first students, they couldn’t stop staring at the plethora of abandoned lobster traps below.
“Ghost traps,” they’re called. Tens of thousands of them.
“When we came out here and the kids were seeing the traps on the bottom, we realized we can do something about this—and it is a big issue, so we will do something about it,” Scott recalled.
And just like that, his next venture was laid out in front of him. Scott founded OceansWide in 2007 to band together educators, students, researchers, and fishermen to promote ocean conservation and exploration and to remove lobster traps from the Maine ocean floor.
OceansWide has already removed more than 30,000 traps over the last five years, and the speed at which they’re removing traps is increasing exponentially as they gain more support. But the organization estimates there’s about 5 million to 10 million traps lost in the Gulf of Maine’s 36,000 square miles.
“We realized we need to expand [our goal] to 500,000 traps per year in order to get the traps that are now on the bottom and keep up with the traps that [the lobster industry] is losing on an annual basis.”
The organization estimates there’s about 5 million to 10 million traps lost in the Gulf of Maine.
OceansWide hopes to reach this yearly target by 2028.
Lifelong Dedication to the Ocean
Founding OceansWide wasn’t too big of a leap for Scott, as he had already dedicated his life to learning how to help the oceans. Growing up fishing on Maine’s Matinicus Isle in the 1970s and 1980s, he saw firsthand the impact overfishing had on the ecosystems there.
The catch was plentiful when he was a kid, but it got so low by the time he was in his 20s that the only fishing industry that hadn’t crashed was lobster. And even that industry’s catch fluctuated a lot. Suddenly, the ocean didn’t feel as impervious to human impacts as once thought, so Scott left his little island in search of how to help the oceans heal.
“We’ve got to do something to fight for the ocean that gave us our livelihood,” Scott said.
That search led him to earn a science and engineering degree before joining the Navy, working on research in the Antarctic and then becoming an ROV technician and pilot for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California. MBARI conducts ocean research for deep sea exploration and marine conservation purposes.
After gaining all this experience in the span of two decades, Scott felt the pull to head back to Maine and teach kids there how to explore the oceans through scuba diving and piloting ROVs.
Scott’s many years of ROV operating brought him around the world, so he knew ocean debris was a big issue everywhere. Conducting research on the issue wasn’t the same as cleaning it up, though.
“The researchers [I worked with] didn’t want to do anything about the trash,” Scott recalled. “They just wanted to do their research…which I understand. It’s what they are paid to do.”
Now, back in Maine, looking beneath the waves with his new OceansWide students, Scott realized that he could actually do something about this problem.
How the Graveyard of Lobster Traps Grew
When Scott was a kid, lobster traps were primarily made of wood. If a trap got caught on something on the bottom of the ocean, fishermen would have little choice but to cut it loose. And because traps were made of wood they would just decompose over time.
In the 1980s, a new model of lobster traps hit the market. These traps were made of wire and several different materials, including plastic, that don’t decompose quickly, if at all.
The $1 billion lobster fishing industry continues to lose traps like they did before, but now the traps just remain intact underwater. According to the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, about 175,000 traps are lost in the Gulf of Maine every year, representing about 5% to 15% of the traps used.
Scott thinks the real number lost is closer to 250,000 to 350,000 a year.
According to the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, about 175,000 traps are lost in the Gulf of Maine every year, representing about 5% to 15% of the traps used.
“[The traps] are not purposely left there,” Scott clarified. “These things cost way too much to leave there on purpose. They’re $200 apiece.”
Fishermen have tried to salvage traps by grappling the bottom of the ocean, but this method can disturb the life on the ocean floor. That’s why OceansWide advocates for fishermen to work with divers and ROV pilots to retrieve the traps instead.
There are so many traps already on the bottom that new traps are now getting snagged by old traps. Ghost traps roll along the bottom of the sea floor, ripping up mussel beds and tangling with each other to form bigger tumbleweeds of debris.
“It just wreaks havoc on those [organisms] who like to live stationary lives on the bottom,” Scott said.
Scott and his students have seen all kinds of organisms caught in these traps. One time he rescued a flounder that had been caught in a trap with its fins being eaten away as a result.
The traps don’t always stay on the ocean floor, either. They can tumble onto the nearby beaches and sink into the sand, making shores hazardous for children to play on.
Bringing Fishermen Onboard
When Scott started his project, he worked with students to start cleaning up the ghost traps. He treaded lightly around the local fishermen because he didn’t want them to feel attacked or defensive about the issue. Scott knew getting fishermen on his side was essential to getting this work off the ground.
Thankfully, when fishermen saw the work OceansWide was doing, it didn’t take much for them to get involved.
“We want to make sure that [the fishermen] are seen as much a hero as you might think we are,” Scott told The Earth & I. “They’ve seen the issue. They’ve understood the issue. They’ve understood that they’re part of the problem and they are trying their hardest to help us out.”
“We want to make sure that [the fishermen] are seen as much a hero as you might think we are.”
Despite spending every day out in the ocean, many fishermen don’t often see what’s beneath the water line. This can make the issue a bit “out of sight, out of mind,” Scott said.
But when Scott’s students show interested fishermen what their ROVs capture, their urge to help tackle the issue grows. Additionally, lobster catchers can see a tangible difference in their catch quantities after a harbor is cleaned up.
“The fishermen saw us taking all these traps off the bottom and said, ‘Well let’s go in and fish that area and see if that’s improved the fishing,’” Scott said. “And, sure enough, they went into a spot where they could barely catch a lobster and, all of a sudden, their traps were full!”
After that, fishermen started volunteering to help clean up the traps and word-of-mouth kept Scott and his team busy visiting different fishing communities around Maine to tell them about OceansWide. Last winter, Scott was invited to visit fishermen in Vinalhaven to start work there. They’ve already removed 5,000 traps from one harbor alone.
Full Scale Disposal
OceansWide works with 27 divers and about 10 vehicle operators to help remove ghost traps. The organization utilizes high-tech sonar to survey how many traps are below. Fishermen volunteer to help remove and transport the recovered traps.
The process goes further than just removing the traps too. OceansWide works with engineers to make sure every part of the trap is properly recycled or disposed of in a program called Traps to Treasure. The team of staff and volunteers separates the plastics, aluminum, and bricks from the traps before crushing the traps to be recycled. Then they properly recycle the aluminum and give the bricks to folks to reuse for structures like patios.
OceansWide works with engineers to make sure every part of the trap is properly recycled or disposed of in a program called Traps to Treasure.
“We have recycled almost 100% of the traps,” Scott said. “The only things that are getting us are the net heads and the [PVC] on the wire itself.”
OceansWide is actively working to find ways to recycle or reuse those parts. They estimate that it takes $7 to $8 to recycle each trap, and over twice as much if the traps were recovered off an island’s coast, due to travel and other costs.
The nonprofit compensates fishermen who help with this process.
Big Wins Despite Little Money
OceansWide’s work continues to be primarily funded by individual donations and family foundation grants. It has also received nearly $200,000 for marine debris removal, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA).
Scott hopes this financial support will grow as their work continues. Like many Mainers, he sees the health of the fishing industry as vital to maintaining the state’s cultural heritage.
“When we were kids, we had all these fisheries. Now we don’t,” Scott said. “If we could do something to bring them back so that our children and our children’s children can live in the culture we’ve lived in, we can continue the heritage we’ve had.”
Scott also has hope for the future through seeing fishermen begin to grasp the importance of this work and teaching the next generation to love the ocean. He thinks he has another decade in him to continue this work before letting his former students take over.
“I’m passionate about it, the kids that work with us are [passionate], and I think we’re inspiring the next generation,” Scott said excitedly. “I’m really enthusiastic about it and even some of the old, old guard in the fishing communities are changing their minds. And that’s a very hard thing to do: change a fisherman’s mind.”
*Becky Hoag is a freelance environmental reporter. You can find her work on her site beckyhoag.com and through her YouTube channel https://youtube.com/beckisphere.
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