Ghost Net, Florida Coast

<strangled groan>

Damn.

no kidding. I hope they string the bastards up. The perps could face up to 50,000 in fines and a year in jail. If they catch them.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrr -- not the turtles!

I wonder if the net could be traced....

Piffka - they're working on it.

This is awful.

Terrible! Hope they find out who is responsible.

I saw a giant turtle down in the keys once, I was on the abandoned railroad bridge at Bahia Honda looking out over the water. The turtle was awesome. It rose out of the water near the bridge to breathe, I guess. It looked around and seemed so in control, so perfect... then it sunk down out of sight.

This kind of stuff pisses me off to no end. Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

net material is made out of very durable woven plastics now. I think that there was a bill that was introduced in Maine a few years ago to return to sisal and fabric . This , of course, was defeated in the kegislature by the fishing industry.
We have the technology to make a line that, if kept wet for a few weeks , will begin to decay. Most long line nets are drawn out and dried periodically and , it seems to me, that is a net gets loose, having it slowly come apart and drift to the bottom would help avoid these sad stories.
There was a small finback whale that was caught in a net and the net was cutting him badly. The whale stranding volunteers got the thing untangled and saved but the many whales that are, caught and drown just sink to the bottom and we never know of them

Sigh

Double sigh

things like that just make you realise how selfish some people are...theyll just abandon a net for whatever reason without thinking of the consequence

and as for farmerman's post, it has become increasingly apparent that our technology has outweighed our humanity

but i guess talking about it will change nothing, there will always be people who will never change

Trixabell - I doubt that the people who left the net were merely thoughtless inre the consequences. I'm sure they knew full well what could happen, but left it anyway.

I'm a little confused, Farmerman. If the long nets were made with a built-in decay factor, but it lasted a few weeks, wouldn't the fish, whales & turtles still be just as dead? They'd sink and we wouldn't know it.

But, if they don't sink, then the synthetic net can be a hazard for a very long time. Or, if they do sink, they can cause long-term damage on the sea floor.

Ahhh, I see. Thanks, k.

The decaying lines and nets are better, as good as we could get and still have fishing.

I wonder how hemp rope would do? I'm going to look into this since my state has a large fisheries segment to the economy.

A good net mender is wonderful to watch. Most of the net sheds are gone, but they were nice places to be in: open, airy, right next to the water, sometimes on pilings over the water.

its true, degradable nets would have a time that theyd still be dangerous but the time would be , at most, a few weeks. If not, as little k sez, wed have a problem that would go on for who knows how long. No matter what industry we attempt , we shall always have some who are real pigs, and they will , hopefully become educated , or , if the nets bills pass, they would get ratted out for non degradable lines.

On our trip to Newf this summer, we saw a few porpoises caught in a big herring seine. We radioed to the stranding center in St Andrews NB and they relayed our coordinates to a local group of voluinteer fishermen who are trained in porpoise and whale strandings. they came in less than 2 hours and we watched as they shooshed the porpoises out. Apparently it happens a lot and usual;ly its no biggy, but if the seines are low tide in rocky shoals, the little guys go nuts and can shred themselves on the rocks