Tons of gill nets, debris removed from Sound

Captain Doug Monk and crew last week gave new meaning to the concept of spring cleaning.

Monk and his Port Angeles-based crew of commercial divers hauled in more than two tons of abandoned gill nets and assorted debris during a three-day sweep outside the entrance to MacKaye Harbor on Lopez Island. The cleanup concentrated on a one-mile area near Iceberg Point, and included areas offshore of several national wildlife refuges in the vicinity.

Jeffrey June, of Seattle-based Natural Resources Consultants, Inc., a fisheries biologist who supervised the cleanup and documented its results, said removal of nets and debris will liberate underwater habitat that had been suffocated by the nets. Abandoned fishing gear is also notorious for trapping fish and snagging birds and marine mammals, and Monk’s divers found a graveyard of bones under the nets, June said.

“There’s nothing out there beneath these nets,” June said. “Well, nothing that is except for the piles of bones and dead animals you find on the bottom.”

While a new spring cleaning standard may have been set, June said the expedition last week was only part of a larger cleanup campaign aimed at north Puget Sound throughout the year. It is funded by state and federal agencies, and by local tribes and private organizations, like the Greystone Foundation, an Oregon-based timber industry group, which donated $30,000 for last week’s project, and a February cleanup exercise in Port Angeles Harbor, and in Dungeness and Sequim bays.

June said a total of 8,000 pounds of abandoned gear, including 69 crab pots and a large aquaculture net, were recovered as a result of the February cleanup. Monk’s crew last week retrieved roughly 5,000 pounds of gill nets and underwater debris near MacKaye Harbor, once the hub of the local fishing fleet.

“Evidence suggests that hundreds, if not thousands, of seabirds have been entangled and killed by the derelict gill nets,” June said. “We had enthusiastic support from the supervisor of the wildlife refuges when he found out about our cleanup project.”

He said the divers also found one dead and decayed marine mammal -- probably a harbor seal -- and a variety of dead fish and crab, including ling cod, rockfish, salmon and steelhead, and several dead Puget Sound king crab.

The Northwest Straits Commission, a federal panel formed five years ago by Sen. Patty Murray and former state Rep. Jack Metcalfe, has set aside $260,000 for the 12-month cleanup campaign. The commission distributes federal funds for programs designed to restore the health of north Puget Sound. It is one of the primary funding sources for restoration programs -- like eelgrass and forage fish surveys -- backed by marine resources committees in the seven north Puget Sound counties.

“It’s a massive, massive problem,” local NWSC member Kevin Ranker said of the amount of derelict fishing gear in Puget Sound. “But this is a wonderful combination of private and government money coming together to support the cleanup effort.”

Despite all the funding, June said only a small portion of derelict gear abandoned in north Puget Sound will be recovered during the remaining nine months of the year-long project. He hopes the project can continue.

“We are hoping to get additional funding since the evidence from the Lopez Island removal indicates we may have a much larger problem than we first thought,” June said.

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