Stuff You Should Know - What is Ghost Fishing?

Episode Date: July 25, 2017

It sounds cool, but ghost fishing is actually a tragic byproduct of modern fishing practices, where abandoned nylon nets can trap and kill sealife for hundreds of years. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, we're going on tour in 2017, so listen up. That's right, you can get all the deeds at sysklive.com, Current Cities Who Love Us, Toronto, Vancouver, Atlanta. Chicago, Minneapolis.

No, they don't love us so much in Chicago. Oh yeah, they're coming around though. In Austin doesn't love us, so we need Chicago and Austin to come out and see us so you can explain why there's no love. Yeah, and everybody else, go to sysklive.com and buy your tickets now, cause they're going fast. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,

from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Jerome Rowland. With three of us together, get us the talking. You got Stuff You Should Know. And you have afternoon tea. I am having some tea right now.

I see that. Yeah, it's, what's that Ta-Zo stuff with the passion fruit and, you know, hibiscus and everything? I think that's the Ta-Zo passion fruit hibiscus tea. Oh yeah, that one. It's that. Buzz marketing.

Yeah. Well. You could buzz market for worse than tea, I guess. Yeah. You could be a local heroin dealer who puts fentanyl in it without telling you. Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about it. Jimmy on the corner.

Right. We should probably not talk too much about heroin though, Chuck, because I'll bet you this episode gets played in a decent amount of like middle schools. Yeah. And I'm glad we got in a couple of jokes early on because I think ghost fishing will rank alongside

like the MS show and the HIV shows as the least funny things to talk about. Yeah, it is pretty sad actually, and I want to actually find ways for humor. And I was like, yep, this is really awful and sad. Well, we'll just take our usual tack where if it rears its head, we'll jump on it and shake it around and hold it up for everybody to see.

Yeah. I think that's how we do it. I think one of the things that was most depressing, depressing, depressing to me was the, I didn't know about all this. And I'm like, I'm in mid 40s and I'm just learning about this. Well, you know how we learned about it.

You remember first hearing about this, we got an email from, and I feel like such a heel. We got an email from a class, like a group in a class. I want to say it was probably a middle school class who had done a project on ghost fishing. And they said, you know who would want to do an episode on this is Josh and Chuck. So they're the ones who brought this to our attention.

I don't remember that. I cannot find the email, it's gone. So I'm very sorry group from class that I can no longer identify, but you guys, if you wrote in to tell us to do an episode about ghost fishing and gave us some sources to start with, you're the only ones who did. So we're talking about you.

I think it was Mrs. Bailey's oceanography class at Sherman Hemsley Middle School in Round Rock, Texas. Man, that show, Amen, was all right. I never watched that. Oh, you didn't. It was pretty good. I mean, it was just basically George Jefferson as a preacher. Yeah, which is great.

Yeah. Because I watched George, you can watch him do anything. You know, George Jefferson as a garbage man, George Jefferson as the president, George Jefferson as a rescue and sea turtles for ghost fishing. Is he still with us? I don't know.

All right. So this is definitely one of the ones we should not just start talking about without defining it first. Most people don't know what ghost fishing is. Yeah. And sadly, like you said, before we hit record, Jerry always asks us what we're doing today.

And you said ghost fishing, what sounds a lot cooler than it is. Yeah. When you sent it over, I was like, ooh, ghost fishing. Oh, spooky. That sounds really neat. But it's no, there's nothing neat about it. No, no, but it does have a cool name agreed.

Yeah. Technically, the definition is called abandoned lost or discarded fishing gear, ALDFG. And what this is is professional commercial fishing gear. And I'm sure there's a small amount of recreational fishing gear, but that's not the real issue. Sure. But commercial fishing gear that has been left out to sea

that then goes on to just kill and maim sea life. For hundreds of years. Yeah, it's awful. Yeah, and it's a real, really big problem. Like just to give one example, we'll kind of go around the world a little bit later. But just in the Northeast Atlantic, they found in one fishery.

So if you look at a sea, an entire sea's going to have like different fisheries, different areas where there are like lots of fish typically. Yes. And that's one of those little spots in one sea in the world. They found something like 25,000 nets, but this is what they estimated. 25,000 nets totaling about 1,250 kilometers in length

that were lost every year, every year. So I want to put that into scale, right? I did a little Google mapping. Yeah. 250 kilometers will get you from New York to Chicago. It will get you, yeah, yeah. How many big mechs? Like a hundred million.

All right. It will get you from Brisbane to Canberra. Don't know where that second place is. They're both in Australia. Okay. And then it will also get you a little under a round trip between London and Edinburgh. Wow.

Yeah, so that's a lot of netting. And that's just what's lost in that one fishery every year. Yeah. We might as well just throw out a few of these because this is going to be a lot of staggering stats. The UN Environmental Program, UNEP, and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, and this is a conservative estimate.

They said that 640,000 tons of fishing gear are left in the oceans each year. Yeah, I did another, a little bit of more Googling. You ready? Yeah. That is equal to 556,521 Ford Fiesta's just dumped in the ocean every year by way. Why did you pick out Ford Fiestas?

Just to sully their name? I don't know. Because I mean Ford Fiesta's a well-selling car all around the world. So everybody knows what a Ford Fiesta looks like. I probably couldn't pick one out on the road, but sure. You could too. You would just know intuitively that that's a Ford Fiesta.

Here's another example, Washington State right here in the United States. They did a little cleanup job there recently, and we'll get to the cleanup efforts because it is happening on a small-ish scale, hopefully increasing. But in this one area, they got, they wrangled 870 ghost nets,

and that contained more than 32,000 marine animals. Yeah, 32,000. And this is just in one part of Washington State. And if you say, well, who cares about marine animals? Well, everyone. That included 500 birds and mammals. Yeah. And we're talking like big, big males, like whales.

This affects everything from whales on down to little tiny fish. These things are just out there floating around. They get loose one way or another, and they just float through the oceans, and they can travel very, very long distances. And along the way, animals get trapped in them. I mean, the whole point of commercial fishing gear

is to trap animals. The problem is, is when they're operating correctly, they're reeled in and they bring the animals with them and then people eat them. And you can have issues with that or whatever, but at least they're not just completely going to waste, which is the problem with ghost fishing. These things are like floating little islands of death

that trap all manner of sea life, and then they just die one way or another, either very quickly depending on whether they need to breathe, like they're a marine mammal and they can't surface, or they're a sea turtle that can't feed any longer because it's got a net growing around its mouth because it stuck its head through a loop when it was a juvenile.

Yeah, and said, oh, what's in there? That looks neat. Let me stick my face in it, and now I have a net, and then I grow bigger and the net stays there and potentially cuts into my skin and becomes a part of me. Like little turtle mothers tell their turtle babies this, like don't put your head through a loop,

just like the human mothers tell their kids, don't stick your arm out of a school bus. Yeah. Same thing, I would guess. Here's another stat. The World Animal Protection Group estimates that getting snared in ghost gear kills about 136,000 CLC lions in large whales every year.

Yeah. And some of these animals are already endangered, so any conservation efforts are being, at the very least, blunted by, or stunted, I guess both, by these other things going on. It's a staggering problem. The plastics that they use, I mean, back in the day, they used to, actually not even that long ago,

nets were made of things that would biodegrade, like sometimes they were cotton or hemp. And now, as we quote, advance, unquote, with synthetics, they have these plastics that these things could be out there for five or 600 years. Yeah. And when they do break up, then the animals eat that stuff and die.

Yeah, do you remember our Great Pacific Garbage Patch episode from years and years ago? Yeah, that factors in for sure. Yeah, well, so a lot of this stuff goes and is attracted to those huge gyres out there in the ocean. And we talked about, in that episode, about how plastic photo degrades when it's just out there in the sun,

the motion of ocean currents combined with the sun photo degrading it, it breaks it down into smaller and smaller bits that become part of the food chain, which is not good. You don't want your food chain eating petroleum-based plastics. And that's what commercial fishing gear is made out of, which, again, that's why it lasts so long,

hundreds of years, which is what you want. You want something very durable in your fishing gear, but when it gets loose, it's a big problem. And like you said, it's a fairly recent problem too, because it wasn't that long ago, like people were using nets that degraded a lot easier. Yeah, I mean, it says in here, I'm not sure where you sourced this,

but 50 or 60 years ago. So in the history of fishing, this synthetic netting is pretty new. Right. And this isn't just like, we're going to talk a lot about animals because that's sort of the main problem, but it's an issue to the industry too.

Like it says right here that here in the US, they've estimated that one single ghost net that's lost or discarded or whatever can kill almost $20,000 worth of Dungeonous Crab over a 10-year span. Yeah. It's just one net. Right. And then there's like...

You could buy seven Ford Fiesta with that amount of money. I knew you'd get some comedy in there. And then there are the small vessels, small and even larger vessels that can get tangled in the stuff. There are divers that can't navigate through this stuff. So there is a bit of a human impact as well.

Right. I think we should take a break though, because I'm getting hot under the collar. Okay. So we'll come back and talk about more of this stuff right after this. Stuff we should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, so we've kind of given a good overview, but let's get into just how fishing gear could kill marine animals.

And there's a number of different ways, and it kind of depends on the animal. Sure. So to start off with, we mentioned how a sea turtle might be like, what's on the other side of this loop? Danger, right? Yeah. Young seal pups might be doing the same thing.

There's a very famous picture of a turtle with a six pack ring. Yeah, man, I've seen that. And its shell is normal size on either side of the six pack ring, but then it looks like it's one of those waste trainer people who have worn a corset for 10 years. It's basically the same thing.

That nylon, that's exactly what this commercial fishing gear is made out of. It's made out of plastic nylon, or nylon plastic, and it holds fast. And when a turtle gets stuck in it or gets stuck around them, when they're young, as they grow, it basically, they have to grow around this thing. Yeah.

And it's not good. It's not good for your physiology. It's not good for locomotion. You're going to be a stunted little turtle when you grow up like that. Yeah, I think you mentioned, obviously, marine mammals that need to surface. They could die within minutes just

because they're simply trapped. They can be affixiated immediately like that, or through over the course of months and years, die more awful deaths. They can prevent them from feeding. Like you said, if something gets wrapped around their mouth and they literally just can't open their mouth, they will starve to death.

Or locomotion can be affected, too, right? So if you are a slow turtle, you're going to have trouble going after food, and you may starve to death like that as well. Yeah, or swimming circles for the rest of your life, because one side of your body is entangled. So you said you can kind of break down the manner of death into acute or chronic.

One of the sad chronic ones that got me was from towing, right? Yeah. So let's say you're a whale. You're a decent-sized mammal. Thank you. You're swimming along, and you get a net stuck on you like hell fast. You're stuck.

You could still conceivably swim along for a while, for a very long while. But now you have basically what amounts to an extra appendage, a ghost net, dragging from you. That's bad enough as it is, because these nets are enormous. Like I was reading about tuna nets. Some tuna fishers use these nets that fall like 700 feet deep and are a mile wide.

Yeah. So you get a segment of that, even just a segment of one of those nets on you. It's going to drag you down and make it harder for you to just move normally. But then on top of that, that net is probably going to catch other animals over time. So not only are you dragging this net,

you're also dragging all the animals who have been caught in that same net and have probably died. And then eventually, you're just going to not be able to keep up any longer and you drown. Yeah. I can't imagine a lot of things more just shameful for humans than seeing a blue whale dragging a 100-foot net full of dead sea animals behind it

until it dies. That's pretty bad. Like I couldn't even have conceived of something that awful until I'd learned about this stuff. It's last word is why. Yeah. Seriously. I know this is not a happy episode, and the other problem

is, I think this is one reason a lot of people haven't heard of this, too. It's like, how many more problems can we have to deal with? Yeah, I know. It's just add one more to the pile, and it makes it really hard not to just get catastrophe fatigued. Yeah.

But you can't. You can't. You can't do that. You can't let it happen. You've got to go take a break, shake it off, and come back at it with vigor. Or you need to say, this one means something to me, so much so that I'm actually going to do something about this.

I'm not just going to click my tongue and shake my head and keep scrolling through my Twitter feed. I'm going to do something about this. No matter whether it's dealing with ghost fishing or dealing with climate change or whatever strikes you in that way, go after it. Yeah. That's probably the best thing you

can do rather than trying to take on everything at once. I totally agree, man. And I also poo-poo the idea that, well, you can't say this is bad when you still do this. Yeah. No, it can all be bad. Yeah. And you can't.

Not everyone can tackle everything. So if you want to be an advocate for dogs on the street, and go do that, because the obvious thing would be for people to say, well, don't eat fish. Don't support the industry. Right. And how can you be a dog advocate and still eat fish? Right, you're worse than Hitler.

But I say find whatever is meaningful to you and try and affect change there as best you can. Yeah. But you know. And then you can say, I spent every weekend for the last year cleaning up ghost fishing nets and saving seal pups. What did you do, Judgie?

So how does this happen? I think that's enough. Like, we've hit people over the head pretty hard with this stuff. Are you sure? I think. I mean, there'll be some more stats in here, but I think they get the point. All right.

How does this stuff happen? And I'm asking us both. And I'll go ahead and say one thing, is sometimes it's accidental. Sometimes there's bad weather. And you have to abandon your gear. Yeah, there was a 2009 United Nations food and agriculture organization report that found that most ghost fishing gear is

not intentionally discarded. That most of it is accidentally lost, right? Which is good that makes you feel a little better. Right. And it's not just fishermen going, who cares? Cut it loose. Yeah. See you in hell, see.

But that also does happen. It does, sadly. It's nice to know that that's not the bulk of it, right? So when it's unintentional, when it's accidental or something like that, an act of nature, a lot of times it's just severe weather. Like, a big storm comes up and just breaks your lines. And all of a sudden, all of your nets are lost.

And believe me, if you're a commercial fisherman, that is about the worst thing that can happen to you short of sinking while you're out. You know? Sure. Especially if your net was already full and you were reeling it in and you lost it because of nature. Yeah.

That's bad for everybody. Another thing that can happen is, and this is one of the bad ones, you could have illegal gear or be fishing illegally, maybe using a method you shouldn't or in a place you shouldn't be. And you, there's what's called enforcement pressure. And you abandon your gear because you don't want to get in trouble.

Yeah. You hide it out of there, basically. Just kind of whistle. Like, I wasn't doing anything. There's also what they call spatial pressure, where if you have some nets floating along and another boat comes into the area, doesn't see it, and runs over them, basically cuts them loose from their moorings, then that has just

become ghost fishing gear itself. Yeah. The economic pressure, I don't fully get this. What I would imagine that could mean is it would cost us more to go out and retrieve these things than to just go back to port and get these guys off the clock. That's part of it. That is definitely part of it.

I think more often than not is, if your gear is all torn up or whatever, and if you take it back to port and you're charged a fee for dumping it because it's considered waste, like I think that's how it's treated in the Netherlands, it makes more sense for you to just litter. If you're going to have to pay to have it disposed of properly, the sea can take it. I'll just cut it loose and look the other way and go back home

and say, what fishing gear? I don't have anything to throw away. So that's economic pressure. And to me, we'll talk about later, that is the key to solving ghost fishing, if you ask me. Yeah, and real quickly, I don't think we said for sure, it's not always just nets. Like crab pots and traps, nets for sure, fishing line, hooks,

rope, and the one that really chafes me is packing bands. So these bands around bait boxes and stuff, those are clearly just dumped. Oh yeah, they just tossed it over the side. Yeah, and that's actually in violation of the United Nations Convention from 1973 that basically was looking to stop pollution from ships. And you're not supposed to throw anything over the side

from those packing bands to cooking oil that you fried your French fries in. Like nothing is supposed to go over the side except possibly fishing trails from cleaning fish. It's called the don't be a huge jerk convention. Yeah, of 1973. That was a heck of a convention. So some of the indirect, it was, wasn't it?

It was basically like a Max Funkon convention. I remember that, and Fred Rogers, that was the keynote speaker, was pretty great. Some of the indirect causes, and we'll see here in a bit, one of the biggest, biggest problems is, like you said, when you come back in with maybe unwanted fishing gear and there's nowhere to dispose of it, just simply a lack of these facilities at port is a big, big problem.

And that could, is that what you said, could fix it all? No, putting it, making, changing it from being an economic burden to an economic incentive to bring in your old fishing gear, I think that'll change it. But that's what you just said is a huge part of that. You need to have places for people to either take it and get money in exchange for their old stuff, or at the very least just throw it in a bin somewhere.

Yeah, not get charged for it. Yeah, exactly. Because if you know that you can just throw it away right when you get to shore, it's only going to take up that space on your way back in, there's a pretty good chance that you're not going to litter a mile-wide net, especially if you can get money for it. Yeah, and another one of the big problems here in this one

article you sent was it's, I think these commercial fishermen are, I used to watch Deadliest Catch, I know how these guys are, they're notoriously stubborn about new technologies, or ironically it wouldn't be a new technology if they tried to go back to biodegradable nets. But just convincing these men and women to add extra expense or add an extra trip to buy something that will help the environment.

It's a hard sell, even though, dudes, you're costing yourself crab money because 20 grand, one lost net, can cost $20,000 for the crab over 10 years. I think they live more in the trip to trip mindset. Yeah, but I think that their industry as a whole thinks of it as the over 10 year kind of thing. And so from what I understand, the industry's kind of woken up to this a little more, and it's starting to take measures

a little bit, and we'll talk about that, but yeah, it's entirely possible that individual fishermen are just kind of like, it's just not worth it. Yeah, this one quote in here really kind of drives it home, and I'd never heard of the phrase tragedy of the commons, but I like it. It says, as with so many tragedy of the common scenarios, the responsibility to act lies with everyone and the

incentive with no one. And that kind of drives it home. There's no like, a lot of times you're in international waters, I know when they have made inroads with some of these big commercial companies, they're a little hesitant to get too involved because all of a sudden their name is printed in an article, even if they're trying to do the right thing, just being associated with

this stuff they don't even want, even if they're trying to help out a little bit. Yeah, because again, it's just one more problem, one more issue, you know? Yeah, like if a company stood up and said, so and so a company is making an effort to now do this, then the flip side is like, well, what have you been doing? That's true.

Why did it take this long? Yeah, that's definitely true. And so companies are a little reticent to even get involved, you know? Yeah, but I think as of 2015, there was a kind of a new initiative that started that's bringing more people into the fold and making it safe to join up. I remember what it was a, man, it was a McDonald's

something, I can't remember. The McDLT. No. McPizza. It was some new sandwich or something that said it's like now made with like real chicken or something like that. And that was like, do you put that on a sign? Because everyone that saw that was like, what was I

eating for the past 30 years? No, with ingredients that may not kill you. Well, let's take another break and then we'll come back. We'll take a quick trip around the world and then we'll talk about what some people are doing to combat ghost fishing. Yeah, a little bit of good news. OK. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we

are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the

cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of

the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say.

Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, we're back and we're in the home stretch. We're going to solve this problem. But first, let's go shame different parts of the world. Yes, let's, uh, how about we step on to my little dingy and take a trip around the world?

Oh, OK. We'll take us a while because my little dingy is slow. But we'll get there eventually. Let's head to the Northeast Atlantic. Yeah, where we already talked about the 25,000 nets that are tossed in there every year. All right, we've already been there. And so I just wasted our three months getting there.

All apologies. All right, so we're stuck in the Northeast Atlantic. I apologize. It's now going to take us six months to navigate through the Midwest of the United States through Nebraska and Kansas in our boat. Maybe we should we're portaging. That's a long boardage all the way to the Northeast Pacific.

Yeah, in Washington state. Well, that would be Northwest. Well, Northeast Pacific Ocean, I guess. Northwest US. Yes. Sorry about that. Yeah, Northeast Pacific. So Washington state has, oh man, we already talked about this too.

Remember out of 870 Gilnets, they rescued or they found 32,000. Man, we already made it here. I hate backtracking. All right, let's carry it back. All right, let's go to the Northwest Atlantic. All right. Surely we haven't been there.

I don't believe we have. The Gulf of St. Lawrence for God's sake. No, we haven't. OK, snow crab. This is one snow crab fishery. They lose about 800 traps a year in this one fishery. And some say that each fisher, like each boat, may lose up to 30% in a year of their traps.

And this is an old fish tail. That's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay office saying that. An old fish tail? Yeah. This isn't Finding Dory. I never saw that one. But I did like, what was it, Nemo?

Finding Nemo, I think, right? Oh, OK. I haven't seen either one of them. Oh, you haven't seen Finding Nemo? No. Well, save it, save it. Well, Emily doesn't like any of those movies ever. Because they make her cry?

Yeah, because every one of them has some sort of sad death. Like, after Bambi, when she was a kid, she's like, I'm done. Yeah, this one has that, too. Yeah, most of them do. And I said that's a significant reason. It's a good movie. Well, that's why I mean, the theory is that's why they do that is to kind of teach kids about death.

Sure. Because I mean, it's so sanitized and kept out of sight in our society, that's a good service. All right, Finding Nemo's on the list then. Yeah, you'll like it. You won't regret seeing it. Where should we go next? Southwest, Southeast Asia?

Well, the Arabian Sea, let's make a little stop over there. They actually, they're all woke over there. They figured out that their people were losing it back in 2002, about 260,000 traps per year. Wow. Yeah, which is a problem, not just for, like, say, the lobster crab or shrimp that they're intended for. They, there's a lot of bycatch that, say, like a lobster trap

can catch as well. Like, fish can make their way in there, too. So you've got 260,000 traps floating around, no longer providing any seafood for anybody. They're just death traps, literal death traps. That's a problem. And so the United Arab Emirates ruled that you had to put a biodegradable, like, face or panel

on the traps from that point on, from 2002 on. So eventually they would just open? Yeah, eventually that one fish that came in last would be freed, while the other ones were like, I wish I would have known. In the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, this is pretty staggering. Around Guadalupe, they lose about half of their traps

every year during hurricane season, which is about 20,000 traps. Yeah, half, man. That's crazy. And then in Louisiana alone, they think that they lose four to 10 million blue crabs lost to their traps, just in Louisiana. Wow.

Four to 10 million blue crabs lost. All right, so this has all been super depressing. What can be done about it? People are trying to take action. There was an initiative in 2015 in London founded by the World Animal Protection. It's an NGO. And the Global Ghost Gear Initiative.

Pretty cool name. Yeah, it is. And here's the deal. Like, sadly, when you're first getting efforts like this going, a lot of the stuff that they're doing is simply gathering data, because it's hard to get support, because people say, well, what's the data?

What's it looking like? And if you say, well, we don't really have great data yet, then they're kind of grounded. Oh, wow, you don't got good data. Yeah, so the very first steps is evidence building and reviewing policies and kind of not rubber meets the road kind of things, but unfortunately, those have to be the first steps.

Right, but they're starting to gather data from some of the rubber meets the road stuff. So if we can go back over to the Pacific Northwest, to the Northeast Atlantic, I think there is a little pilot program in Washington state to clean up ghost fishing stuff. And from, I think, 2010, or no, 2007, they recovered 481 lost skill nets, right?

Yeah. So this kind of stuff where you've got people, I think they had like a few million dollars from the government and just started a program. When you've got people doing these things, and then you have a central organization like the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, then the gears start moving, the wheels start moving.

Like things start happening, because then you start to generate the data, and then you can start to make the press releases, then you can start to get the public aware of this kind of thing. And then you get pressure on industry, and then industry shapes up. Yeah, here's one of my favorite things, too. And this is not just for this industry and this problem,

but one of my favorite, favorite things in the world is when someone comes along and says, hey, I'll take that waste product you have, because I can use it. That's what I'm saying is going to be the key. Yeah, for sure. And this is already happening a little bit, because like a lot of things, you can generate power through some of this stuff.

So that's one way that I think there's a company called NetWorks. It's like an org. Oh, an org? Yeah. There's a few companies that came together to make NetWorks, I think. Well, in their case, I don't think

they're turning it into energy, but they're turning fishing nets into carpet tiles. Carpet tiles, boom. Great. Right? There is a one called Fishing for Energy that's like NOAA, Covanta Energy. Oh, right.

And then, of course, Schnitzer Steel, the face of ghost gear. They all came together and started putting gear recycling outposts in, I think, 11 states all over the place, all over the coasts of 11 states. So that when fishermen come in, whether you're just a little solo person and you've got some monofilament line left over, or you're a commercial guy, you can just throw your old gear in here

and it gets recycled, right? And then they take it, and I think Schnitzer Steel takes it and gets strips all the metal from it for recycling. And then what's left goes to Covanta Energy, and they turn it into energy. I looked high and low to exactly how they do that, and I couldn't find it. So it makes me a little nervous about what they're doing

to turn this into energy. But they supposedly have created enough energy from the stuff that's been recycled to power like 2,200 homes for a month. That's amazing. Yeah. And I mean, this is stuff that otherwise would have just stayed out in the sea and drowned whales and turtles.

Do you like skateboarding? Sure. There's a sustainable skateboard retailer name B-U-R-E-O Burio, and they are turning fishing nets into skateboards. Yeah. Like, how cool is that? Yeah, it is pretty cool, because they're actually buying fishing net from fishermen.

They use stuff, so they're giving money for it, and then they're turning around and using it to recycle. Pretty cool. And then there's a lot of stuff you could do if you don't have a skateboard company or you're not an energy company. There's a group called Ghost Fishing. And they, I think that's what they're called, right?

Ghost Fishing? I'm not sure which one is this. It's just Ghost, I think it's just Ghost Fishing. Anyway, they, yeah, they're a group of divers. Oh, yeah, yeah. They were wreck divers in the North Sea. I think they were originally based maybe in the Netherlands. And they noticed on these wrecks that there

was tons of ghost gear. Apparently, it's a big problem with shipwrecks. So that's why it's kind of dangerous for humans. And it also gets caught up on coral and stuff, too. So they started cleaning up. They took it upon themselves to start cleaning up some of these wrecks. And then little by little, this little group of friends

that were wreck divers that started cleaning it up started making connections with other groups of divers all around the world. And now all of a sudden, the Ghost Fishing, I think Ghost Fishing Alliance or Initiative, is this multinational network of people who love scuba diving and who spend some of their scuba diving time cleaning up ghost nets.

And there's actually pictures of these people like freeing seal pups from the Ghost Fishing net, you know? Yeah. It's pretty cool. Like, if you're into scuba diving, there's something you can do right there. Yeah, I imagine there are not many better sleeps at night you can get than having spent

your day freeing seal pups. Yeah, I don't think so. You probably sleep pretty well. I would guess, too. In Australia, we can't leave you out. There are a couple of cool things going on there. There's a program called, or a group called Ghost Nets Australia. And they've been partnering with indigenous groups

to basically help cleaning up this stuff in individual areas. And then there's another fishery, like we kind of have been picking on the fisheries and some of these companies. But some are getting on board. There's one in Australia called the Northern Prawn Fishery. So definitely give them your support if you live there. They're working with the World Animal Protection Group.

They report sightings. They report ghost gear locations, basically like, here's where it is, at least. And sometimes they're even involved in retrieving some of this stuff and setting some of these animals free when they come across it. Yeah, I think that's part of it. You've got to have the government involved

to set up recycling stations or whatever to fund pilot programs to get the data going. And then with industry, you have to educate industry. You have to give them financial incentives to keep their nets, to bring them back ashore. And then, because they're also the ones who are out there in the sea, to make it so that they have incentive to stop and take in ghost gear when they see it.

And part of that is what just happened for North Prawn Fishery. They just got free advertisement for being the good guys because they got involved. Yeah, absolutely. So good, I think we just solved the problem. I don't think so. I'll give you another shout out, too.

There's a brewery from Delray, Florida, at Delray Beach, Florida, called Saltwater Brewery. And they made some news recently because they debuted a six-pack ring that is made to biodegrade. And it's also edible. So rather than growing around a turtle or keeping a turtle from growing correctly, a turtle can actually eat the six-pack ring when it encounters it

if it makes it into the water. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, a lot of the crapperies don't even use the rings anymore. They have the recycled plastic kind of lid things, you know? Yeah. Good job.

You had me at Brewery. If you want to know more about ghost fishing or ghost gear, you can type those words into your favorite search bar. And it will bring up some pretty good stuff. And since I said stuff, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this one T-shirt ideas. I'm going to email from a dude that has kind of kept up with our T-shirt names.

Sure. He wants us to pick all three of us to each pick our favorite. OK. That would be Jerry. Jerry, you just knock like a horse on the ground when I get to a T-shirt you like. Hey, guys, love your show and your tangents are hilarious.

But what really cracks me up are all the funny band names and T-shirt ideas you come up with. I collected a few of my favorites over the years and the time has come. Made to turn a few of these T-shirt dreams into realities. I'm going to design and print a few T-shirts. But my problem is I can't decide which phrases to use. So if you could each pick one, it would really make my day.

And there are 12. So starting with number one, Truss's Rock. Exclamation point. That's not bad. Friends don't let friends ear candle. That's actually Emily has that shirt. So that's the thing. Oh, really?

Yeah. OK. I think someone might have sent us. Send that in, actually. OK. Yeah, because that's happened from time to time. Like we got Mike's on pants off T-shirts before. Yeah, yeah.

Number three, if you have a beacon, a probe, and a shovel, you could be OK. I don't even know what that one's from. Well, he tied them to the episodes. But for brevity, I'm just going to read these. OK. Mystery is weird. I like that one.

Not too bad. To each their own, eh, seems a little snotty these days to have that on a shirt. It's aggressive and hostile. Like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Master of enjambment, that may be mine. Is it? I think so.

So far, mine is mystery is weird. I listened to the Tick episode. I do remember that. That's for everybody. This one's pretty good. Find your own butter. Jerry just knocked on the floor. OK, there's Jerry's.

Eye viking. Oh, that's an old one. Yeah. Natural selection, Colin. It just makes sense. Yeah, that's a good one. A little preachy. Don't scrutinize me.

It's aggressive. And finally, let's wash our hands as often as possible. Mine is definitely mystery is weird. OK, I'm going to go with Master of enjambment. And Jerry definitely likes to find your own butter. OK. In fact, I think Jerry said that to me in this office. Who was that that wrote that in?

That is from Steve Rickert in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Steve. And he said, if you summing your shirt sizes, I'll be sure to make an extra of each. So I'm in XL. You're probably at what, large? Yeah, man. I'm right on the border between large being

a little drapey and medium, really showing off way too much. TMI. So is there something in between medium and large? I guess large. Jerry, what are you? Jerry's a medium. Did she stamp that out? She did.

Medium unisex, she said. And then finally, he closes with PPS in a place in time where people with big platforms often use their voices to create division. So refreshing to listen to your show. I admire the respect you showed to all people and the effort you put into being inclusive and empathetic. Yes.

Thank you, Steve. Yeah, thanks a lot, Steve. But hey, find your own butter. All right. Everyone turn on Steve. If you want to be like Steve and just come up with a great email, well, you can start by tweeting to us if you don't like the email.

I'm at josh underscore um underscore clark. We're also at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or slash stuff you should know, either one of those two. You can send us all an email to stuffpodcast.house.works.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

visit house stuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio

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