Dear Subscriber First Name,

The GGGI has had a busy start to 2025! We have participated in a regional meeting in Australia, participated in IMO’s 12th Pollution Prevention and Response session, an OSPAR gear marking workshop, and a regional webinar co-hosted by the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism and the GGGI. We also attended the second Gear Innovation Summit in Moncton, New Brunswick, and will be on the ground at the Seafood Expo North America, and the Our Ocean Conference. We have some NANCI updates to share, in addition to some highlights from GGGI members the Healthy Seas Foundation and One Earth - One Ocean. Finally, we share some successes from the NOAA Marine Debris’ Program, a recent Australian ghost gear news article, and welcome our newest GGGI member!

The GGGI loves celebrating the successes of its members! As always, if you have any ALDFG related news that you would like to share in the next newsletter, please email caitie@ghostgear.org

The Sub-Committee on Pollution Prevention and Response held its 12th session at IMO Headquarters in London (in-person with hybrid participation) from 27 to 31 January 2025. GGGI’s IMO Liaison, Estelle van der Merwe and Global Policy Lead, Hannah Pragnell-Raasch both joined virtually. The week covered an ambitious agenda around key topics including marine biosafety, prevention of air pollution from ships, and marine plastic litter from ships.

The Sub-Committee reviewed the Action Plan to Address Marine Plastic Litter from Ships that was originally approved in 2018 which includes specific actions to address ALDFG in particular, requirements for mandatory goal-based gear marking, reporting of lost gear and port reception facilities. The reviewed 2025 Action Plan will now seek approval by the Marine Environment Protection Committee at its upcoming session taking place in April (MEPC 83). While the Working Group made some progress discussing the requirements for lost gear reporting, disappointingly, the plenary once again deferred work on the marking of fishing gear to PPR 13. Under the Clean Shipping Coalition (CSC) and Friends of Earth International (FOEI), GGGI supported the submission of a paper to MEPC following the outcomes of PPR 12 related to Work Emanating From The Action Plan To Address Marine Plastic Litter From Ships, calling for Member States to submit concrete proposals that advance concrete regulatory measures.

GGGI Associate Director Joel Baziuk, Latin America Project Coordinator Claudia Cecilia Olimon, and Membership Specialist Caitie Frenkel attended the second Gear Innovation Summit on February 25th and 26th in Moncton, New Brunswick last month. It has been five years since the first Gear Innovation Summit was hosted by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) in Halifax, and it was wonderful to see how much progress has been made with regard to “whale safe” gear technologies and pilots, and ALDFG projects both domestically and internationally. It was also lovely to connect with a lot of GGGI members in person!

Both Joel and Claudia took the the stage to moderate and speak on multiple panel discussions on day two, including:

• “Untangling the Issue: Ghost Gear on the International Stage”;

• “Revolutionizing Cleanup Around the World: Innovative Programs Tackling Ghost Gear”;

• “Data in Action: Effective Fishing Gear Reporting Practices”; and

• “Harvesting Solutions: A Fisher’s View on Ghost Gear Challenge”.

Nearly every speaker on the entirety of day two was either a GGGI member or affiliated with the GGGI, demonstrating once again the breadth of expertise within the GGGI community. The GGGI also co-hosted the evening reception on February 25 in partnership with PEW Charitable Trusts. The GGGI team would like to thank PEW for their support to put on such a great reception, and to DFO for putting on such an amazing event. We’re looking forward to the next Gear Innovation Summit!

GGGI’s Global Policy Lead, Hannah Pragnell-Raasch, participated in the first regional workshop on addressing ALDFG in the Arafura and Timor Seas. Under the Arafura and Timor Seas Ecosystem Action (ATSEA) Program, a regional partnership between the governments of Indonesia, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea, with the support of the government of Australia, this 4-day workshop focused on driving solutions to address ALDFG in the ATS region, fostering collaboration between the partnering governments, First Nations representatives and other relevant organizations. Indigenous rangers from the Gulf of Carpentaria shared their experiences managing ghost gear with policy makers in the region. The workshop will help inform the next steps to address ghost gear and forms part of the Australian government’s ongoing commitment to support regional action to reduce ghost gear in the ATS region.

OSPAR Commission in collaboration with the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management hosted a virtual workshop on February 17th exploring how fishing gear marking systems can prevent marine litter and ALDFG from entering the marine environment. The workshop was conducted in the context of OSPAR’s Second Regional Action Plan for Marine Litter, in particular Action B.4.1 to “Prevent, locate, retrieve and handle abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG)”. This action contributes to OSPAR’s North East Atlantic Environment Strategic Objective to reduce marine litter from fishing and aquaculture gear. 

During the workshop, GGGI’s Global Policy Lead, Hannah Pragnell-Raasch, provided an overview of the issue of ALDFG and the importance of implementing effective gear marking strategies in order to prevent, mitigate, and remediate the impacts of ALDFG. Hannah also shared some examples of various gear marking strategies that have been implemented around the world, from Canada’s national gear marking strategy to local pilot projects trialing gear marking technologies. Other guest speakers included Edgars Goldmanis (EC DG MARE), Dr. Pingguo He, (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth on behalf of UN FAO), Stefanie Werner (German Federal Environment Agency), Per-Olaf Andersson, (Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management) and Haraldur Arnar Einarsson (Marine and Freshwater Research Institute, Iceland, on behalf of UN FAO).

This workshop was a follow-on to the gap analysis on the application of the FAO’s voluntary guideline for marking of fishing gear in the OSPAR maritime area that was conducted in 2023. The report demonstrated that most OSPAR Contracting Parties have fishing gear marking systems in place, but that they were mainly developed to enhance navigation safety and to verify lawful use of fishing gear.

Associate Director, Joel Baziuk chaired the first of two webinar sessions co-hosted by the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CFRM) titled ‘ALDFG in the Caribbean: Challenges, Successes and Opportunities’ on February 18, 2025. These webinars aim to bring together stakeholders from the Caribbean region to discuss efforts to address ALDFG in the Caribbean context, and to gather feedback into the draft Caribbean ALDFG Regional Action Plan developed by the GGGI with input from the CRFM and Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute in 2021. This first session saw presentations on ALDFG-related work being done in the Caribbean from Joel Baziuk (GGGI); Mrs. Shellene Berry (National Fisheries Authority, Jamaica); Dr. La Daana Kanhai (University of the West Indies) and Ms. Fadilah Ali (GCFI). To view a recording of the first webinar, click here. The second session will be a deep dive on the Caribbean ALDFG Regional Action Plan to be held on March 18. For more information and to register for the session, please visit the webinar website.

The GGGI and Ocean Conservancy team will be attending the following in-person events in the coming months. If you’ll be there and would like to say hello, let us know!

Seafood Expo North America (SENA) 2025

Corporte Partnerships Manager, Sara Pfiefer, will be attending the Seafood Expo North America this year in Boston, Massachusetts. She will be speaking on a panel titled “Seafood Industry-led Efforts to Address the Deadliest Form of Marine Plastic Debris” on Monday, March 17th from 11:30 - 12:30pm Eastern time. She would love to connect with any GGGI members in attendance, so if you’re interested in grabbing a coffee with her please email her at: spfeifer@oceanconservancy.org

Our Ocean Conference

The GGGI and Ocean Conservancy will have a strong presence at the  10th Our Ocean Conference in Busan, South Korea from April 28 - 30, 2025 and host several events, including one focusing on ghost gear efforts. The conference, which launched in 2014, continues to be one of the most important ocean events, mobilizing concrete actions to address the main threats facing the ocean. This year's conference will include an overarching theme on actions for advancing a sustainable ocean through digital technologies. For more information about the Our Ocean Conference, please visit their website. 

As part of the GGGI Signature North American Net Collection Initiative (NANCI project), the GGGI supported several ALDFG removals in Baja California Sur, Mexico over the last two months. Local partner COBI, a Mexican NGO seeking to achieve resilient coastal communities and healthy oceans, conducted diving and beach-based ALDFG removals in El Saltito, Los Muertitos, San Juan de La Costa dock, Tarabillas, and La Gaviota Island. These removals targeted fishing lines, gillnets, hooks, and sinkers to help protect sensitive ecosystems in these areas, especially coral reefs. The GGGI and COBI will continue to work together to conduct removals in the Yucatan Peninsula in the coming months, so stay tuned!

The Healthy Seas Foundation is a GGGI member based in the Netherlands focused on tackling marine debris, particularly derelict fishing nets, to promote healthier aquatic ecosystems. Healthy Seas has been collaborating with volunteers, educators, fishers, harbour authorities, and waste managers globally to repurpose marine litter into innovative products. In 2024, Healthy Seas were focused on abandoned fish farms, or “ghost farms”, highlighting their work in a recently published documentary. For more information on their work, please review their 2024 Annual Report.

One Earth - One Ocean

One Earth - One Ocean (oeoo) became a GGGI member in 2024, and is an environmental organization focused on reducing plastic pollution in aquatic and coastal ecosystems globally. During the summer of 2024, oeoo updated their vessel, the SeeKuh1, which helped them conduct several ALDFG and marine debris removal and education events in the German cities of Kiel, Sassnitz, Hamburg, and  Rügen. A team of divers removed over 350 kg of derelict fishing nets and identified 16 locations near shipwrecks near  Rügen to visit in 2025. They also conducted a week-long removal in Denmark, collecting another 550 kg of nets with a group of student divers. Oeoo has also been collaborating with the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research and Sonoware in Kiel on the GhostNetBusters project, a joint research project aiming to optimize the detection of ghost nets in the Baltic Sea through side-scan sonar technology. During the summer of 2024, they explored the Kiel Fjord using side-view sonars to locate lost fishing gear and ghost nets.

NOAA Marine Debris Program

The NOAA Marine Debris Program (NOAA MDP) is the USA’s federal lead for addressing the impacts of marine debris, including ALDFG, in aquatic ecosystems. They collaborate with organizations in the USA and globally to prevent marine debris from entering the environment, remove it from coastal areas, conduct research and monitoring, and respond to debris created by disasters. Last year, the NOAA MDP collaborated with the William and Mary's Batten SChool and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to support 11 new removal projects under the Nationwide Fishing Trap Removal, Assessment, and Prevention (TRAP) Program. These projects will remove derelict fishing traps from coastal waterways to support fishing communities and economies while collecting data to prevent future gear loss. In December 2024, the NOAA MDP hosted an ALDFG focused webinar as part of their regular series “Tropical Islands Partnering on Solutions for Marine Debris (TIPS)”. This webinar featured presentations from various organizations that work on ALDFG mitigation efforts, including GGGI member Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project. Additionally, the NOAA MDP has been collaborating with Innerspace Exploration, local governments, multiple tribal partners, and other stakeholders to remove marine debris, including ALDFG, from waterways in Puget Sound and Alaska.

Hawaiʻi Pacific University courses on plastic pollution and recycling research

This summer 2025, the Center for Marine Debris Research at Hawaiʻi Pacific University is hosting a series of three short courses in the fields of plastic pollution and recycling research. These courses are aimed at students, academics, and industry employees interested in professional development and advancing plastic circularity.

The topics and dates of each course are:

• Microplastics quantification: June 2 – 5, 2025

• Forensically deconstructing marine debris: June 23 – 26, 2025

• Recycling marine debris: July 21 – 24, 2025

A limited number of scholarships will be available and prioritized for nonprofits, academic institutions, and early career professionals. The team at CMDR is outstanding and has an incredible amount of experience with plastic pollution research. You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity, plus it takes place in beautiful Waimānalo, Hawaiʻi!

More details about the courses can be found here: https://www.hpu.edu/cncs/cmdr/research/tipc.html

Aboriginal Rangers use Drones on Ghost Net Surveys in Northern Australia

On February 8th, ABC News Australia published an article titled ‘Rangers use drones to survey north Australia coastline for ghost nets’. This article highlights how the Tiwi and Yugul Mangi rangers are using drones and AI to monitor for ghost nets off of the coasts of Ngukurr and Darwin. These tools have helped them remove 800 ghost nets from beaches and reefs in their regions, however, they are looking for more funding to support their efforts.

Welcome To Our New GGGI Members!

The GGGI continues to expand its membership. Please join us in welcoming Astraeus Ocean Systems! We look forward to working with them on all things ghost gear.