
Shift Environmental Technologies (Shift) and Lax Kw’alaams Fishing Enterprises (LKFE) began working together in 2021 to clear ecologically sensitive fishing grounds of discarded or lost fishing materials, also known as “ghost gear”, using a SEAMOR Chinook Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV).
The project to find and responsibly dispose of the gear took place in within the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation traditional marine territory, and was made possible using funding gathered over a two-year period from the Canadian government’s Ghost Gear Fund, First Nations Solid Waste Management Initiative, and the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation.
As well as potentially damaging boats, equipment, and habitats within fishing areas, ghost gear can entangle and harm mammals, fish, birds, and other local marine life. Across the world, this results in significant economic and environmental consequences, particularly in areas like Lax Kw’alaams with communities who rely on their marine environment, so it is crucial that these ecosystems are inspected and kept healthy.
Shift and LKFE mapped the ghost gear concentrations after surveying the fishing grounds, deploying a SEAMOR Chinook ROV with an assortment of modular attachments and a twist-pair tether to retrieve the abandoned gear, including many crab pots, from these remote areas. Read the full article >>
Among the inspection ROV‘s attachments are the Blueprint SeaTrac lightweight USBL acoustic positioning system and the Blueview P900-45 multi beam sonar, both helping to efficiently locate the debris, even in low-visibility.
The Chinook ROV ended up truthing the sonar data. The most successful method was to find strings of crab pots using a towed or hull-mounted side-scan sonar, then revisit those spots with the ROV and get video footage of the target.
The ROV footage confirmed that the debris was crab pots, helped determine whether it was retrievable, and identified the locations of the terminal ends of the string. Then a grapple was dragged through the locations of the terminal ends for retrieval.
In total, the team collected 630 kg of ghost gear using the SEAMOR Chinook ROV, with the Port Edward Harbour Authority providing cleaning and storage facilities for the retrieved gear.
The assets and training acquired through the ghost gear retrieval program assist the Lax Kw’alaams fishing community to continue retrievals for years to come. That, in turn, provides economic and environmental benefits into the future and supports Indigenous-led coastal resource management.
Read the original article, or visit the SEAMOR Marine website to find out more.Â