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Ghost fishing gear is the deadliest form of marine plastic as it unselectively catches wildlife, entangling marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles, and sharks, subjecting them to a slow and painful death through exhaustion and suffocation.
Derelict fishing gear, sometimes referred to as "ghost gear," is any discarded, lost, or abandoned, fishing gear in the marine environment. This gear continues to fish and trap animals, entangle and potentially kill marine life, smother habitat, and act as a hazard to navigation.
Ghost fishing occurs when lost or abandoned gear continues to catch or entangle marine life. It can have devastating consequences on the marine environment.
When lost fishing gear keeps catching fish after its intended lifespan, it is called ghost fishing. Ghost gear can enter the water in a number of ways, including getting snagged on rocks or coral, being accidentally cut loose by other marine traffic or being swept away and lost during storms.
Abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear, commonly referred to as ghost gear, contributes significantly to the problem of plastic pollution in our ocean. These gillnets, traps, and other types of fishing gear are particularly harmful because they can continue to catch target and non-target species indiscriminately for years.
The Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI) is a cross stakeholder alliance of fishing industry, private sector, NGOs, academia and governments focused on solving the problem of lost and abandoned fishing gear worldwide.
Recent studies indicate that abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) – also known as ghost fishing gear – makes up 46-70% of all floating macroplastics in the ocean gyres by weight. One study estimated that 46% of marine debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are fishing nets (Lebreton et al., 2018).