NEW YORK — Those who make their living out on the open ocean now have the opportunity to partake in a side hustle that simultaneously tidies up the environment.
Commercial fishermen have been offered a"bounty" to collect derelict fishing gear, often the culprit of the death of marine animals, and bring the debris back to shore.
The research center first tested the program between 2020 and 2021, when researchers trying to determine where the fishing gear was coming from paid fishermen who were already fishing near the northwest Hawaiian islands, the main Hawaiian islands and the North Pacific gyre a bounty to collect the debris and bring it back, Raquel Corniuk, research manager for Hawaii Pacific University's Center for Marine Debris Research, told ABC News.
Now, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Program, the Hawaii Longline Association and Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources, the program has enough funding to pay to remove 100 metric tons, or 220,462 pounds, of derelict fishing gear over the next two years.
"When I first saw the damage caused by these large ghost nets on corals in Kane'ohe Bay, I was motivated to prevent it from happening," Corniuk said, describing the new program as a"win-win" for fishermen and marine environments, especially considering the fishing gear can be a navigational hazard and often gets caught in vessels.
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