147 tonnes of litter removed from the Baltic: Poland is the European leader in the field of ghost nets

Derelict fishing gears and their impact on marine environment are the subject of many projects and research around the world. Poland is one of the leaders in this field. The first documented activities aimed at removing derelict fishing gears from the sea was undertaken in the Baltic in 2004 with the research vessel of the Sea Fisheries Institute in Gdynia.   

The first documented activities aimed at removing derelict fishing gears from shipwrecks, in cooperation with divers, took place in 2007. In the following years, in the framework of projects carried out by non-governmental organisations and fishermen, a methodology for conducting effective actions to remove derelict fishing gears was created.

These actions, apart from their undoubtedly positive effect on the environment, also had a positive socio-economic impact by engaging fishermen in actions aimed at improving the Baltic ecosystems during the periods of temporary cessation of the fishing activities – says Olga Sarna from the MARE Foundation.

The inclusion of several measures aimed at environmental protection into the Operational Programme Fisheries and the Sea 2014-2020, implemented by non-governmental organisations and fishermen,  changed the nature of the involvement of fishermen in environmental protection from passive to active. One of these initiatives was the project Clean Baltic. This project  focused on coastal areas, where the probability of finding derelict gill nets, the most harmful from the point of view of uncontrolled catches after their loss, was the highest. This was the largest project targeting ghost nets. The retrieval actions were carried out in 2017 by over 500 fishing vessels (up to 12 metres in length) from 5 fishermen’s organisations. The Polish coastal waters were covered by the project, including Baltic as well as the Lagoons (the Vistula Lagoon, The Szczecin Lagoon and Kamieński Lagoon as well as the Dąbie Lake).

147 tonnes of litter were removed from the Baltic, consisting in great part from gillnets, but also trawls, fyke nets, longlines and traps. The retrieved fishing nets contained fish and other living organisms, such as birds and mussels. One net contained a dead grey seal. Other litter, such as buoys, boxes, lines, tyres and some metal items were also retrieved from the sea. More on these activities carried out in the framework of the project from the films available at YouTube.