Cleaning Up The Fjords
As I mentioned in a earlier post, we fish a lot. And we fish a lot after halibut.
When we set the line, wait over night, and then haul everything in, the hooks are draged along the bottom and can get tangled on to things.
Well, theres been a couple is incidents where we've snaged the hooks on some rope.
This rope is used for ancering up fishing farms in and along the fjords so they don't drift off. 15-20 meters (50-60 feet) of rope, thick as a wrist, coiled up and sunk to the bottom with a big rock to keep it down.
Dead in the water, this garbage weighs probably 60 kg (130 lbs), which we end up dragging up by hand. Yes, it could be som good fish grazing on these ropes, but the pain of dragging these massive chunks of garbage is so unnecessary.
As you can see in the picture underneath, the big rope in the boat is pretty hefty to drag in by hand!
So Why Do They Dump It?
Well, I'm not quite sure, but I do suspect that when I fish farm have to move location because of either decease or simply are upgrading, they have to get rid of a lot of excess materials. For every ton of garbage they throw out, they have to pay a certain fee. Sallary for the truckdrivers picking it up and stuff like that.
Instead of taking it all with them, and paying more for it, I suspect that a few just toss stuff into the sea and forget about it.
Win-win situation right? The truckdriver don't have to drive so many times back and forth, and the fishery don't have to pay as much! Until I come along ..
For those of you who havven't seen how these fish farm (salmon farms) look like, I'll post a quick picture of it for ya'!
Floating Ropes
I lost a cod net last time we were out fishing, because I set one of my nets right on top of one of these ancer ropes.
As I said, these ropes secures the whole farm from drifting off, and have to be pretty beefy to handle the currents inside of a fjord.
My net must have tangled up in that rope, and brokes off when I tried to haul it in. These ropes aren't more than 20 feet under the surface, and can cause some real problems if you don't know their exact location.
This rope I also think was left behind by the previous fish farm inside our fjord, just because they didn't want to clean up after them self.
I don't have much of a conclution from this. Nor do I want the fish farms to dissapear all in all, but I wish they could be better at cleaning up after them self. This does not apply to just fish farms. Every commercial fishery, and every private fisher should think before they toss stuff like that into our water.
I've snaged on to ropes, old lines, plastic sheets, tents. All kind of stuff that I end up with, not knowing what to do with.
This Weekend
I'm not sure if I'm able to post much this weekend. Family stuff, that we all ultimately end up with ;)
I'll try to get something ready for tomorrow, but saturday and sunday is not yet certain!
If I don't get anything posted, I wish you all a good weekend, and I'll post more next week!
Thank you for reading!
I agree that it would be nice if the companies responsible for the fish farms would take more interest in cleaning up their mess. Great story!
We all have a long way to go there! One person at a time should make it happen :)
It is such a shame that so many companies and individuals do not take responsibility for the damage they cause. Leaving garbage at the bottom of the sea, or the fjord is irresponsible at best, and can be very destructive. Thank you for this informative post.
It's happening both on land and in water! It's a shame, but as I said earlier - One person at a time, should make thing better :)
We have fish farms here where I live in Canada and they post many problems. The use of chemicals to kill sea lice is a really frightening one for this area because it also kills lobster and that is about the only really profitable fishery left for fishermen on the east coast of Canada. Every other fishery has been practically destroyed by bad policies and over fishing. Some are starting to recover from near collapse in the 1980's but it's still uncertain if the stocks can be managed to allow them to recover.
That's too bad :( We've had some lack of lobsters here as well, but I sure hope they will regenerate!
It's very sad how much garbage is polluting our lovely oceans. I hope we get better about it in the future!
I've read that scientist are trying to make plastic out of seaweed! Biodegradable and reusable :)
I've always wondered how they make something biodegradable AND reusable. Haha like, how is it supposed to stay shelf stable if it can bidegrate??
Interesting
I will follow you to see your future posts! +UP
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