Natural Reality Check

Lethal Ghosts

So today I'm going to start my entry by providing a couple of important links. These explain what Ghost Fishing is, why it's harmful and what can be done far better than I can.

So this is a one is for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more commonly known as NOAA's article on Ghost Fishing.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ghostfishing.html#:~:text=%22Ghost%20fishing...

This is informative but for those people who don't trust the United States government, I'm going to provide a more "everyman" kind of source. If you follow the link: https://fishingbooker.com/blog/ghost-fishing-explained/

If you're done checking out those(or haven't done so). I'm just going to add my two cents.

I used to contribute to a citizen science project called NeMo-net. Yes that's actually how NASA spells their project's name. The goal was to have humans look at images of coral reefs and classify coral in the pictures to teach AI to do the same.

It's all good fun. If you can stand the juvenile behaviors of other users who didn't care about serious science.(not only was there a chance to classify images, you could also review other's work. Unfortunately this led to me getting irked by people scribbling multicolor "union jacks" and poop emojis onto images of reefs. Seriously? Anyways that's not the point.)

The relevance of the project to this entry comes from classification pictures provided from a specific area, Tumon Bay, Guam. NASA added in the classification of Anthropogenic Object.

An anthropogenic object is anything man made that ends up in the water.

Too often I had to trace the narrow form of some lost or discarded fishing line going across the reefs of Tumon Bay.

I didn't know what Ghost Fishing was back then. I educated myself and now that I know, those images are more heartbreaking than ever.

These discarded lines, nets and traps hurt our reefs. These colonial animals we call coral pull Carbon from our oceans to build their skeletons. If they die off, we loose one of our biggest allies in the fight against climate change!

So even if you're okay with a future without dolphins, turtles and whales, don't just sit idly. Humanity's future depends on at least reducing if not stopping Ghost Fishing.

I plan to write letters to my township and to my senators advocating for safe disposal sites for worn fishing gear. Or if places for disposal exist already, demand that they educate people about these programs. If it is possible for anyone reading this to write your local government officials. Tell them it's time to end abandoning fishing gear!