CharlieTuna
03-29-2010, 10:12 AM
Fishing gear recycling comes to Pigeon Cove
By Jonathan L'Ecuyer
Staff Writer
ROCKPORT — Rockport has become the latest community to participate in a national program aimed at providing fishermen a cost-free solution to recycle and recover energy from old, derelict fishing gear.
When fishing gear is lost off boats, it's not really gone. In webs and rolling clumps, the nets, ropes and traps endure for decades as destructive artifacts of the fishery, suffocating life on the ocean floor, snaring fish and getting caught in propellers.
Now, gear collected in Rockport beginning today will be stripped of metals for recycling with the help of Schnitzer Steel, and processed into clean, renewable energy at the Covanta Energy-from-Waste facility in Haverhill.
An opening ceremony marking Rockport's "Fishing for Energy" partnership is scheduled for 11 a.m., on Pigeon Cove Wharf, located at the end of Breakwater Avenue. The rain location is Conference Room A in Town Hall.
Rockport Conservation Agent Geralyn Falco, who worked to bring the program to Rockport after fellow Conservation Commission member Rob Claypool suggested the town look into organizing a large scale marine debris clean up, said Covanta will install two of the large bins in which fishermen can deposit their gear.
She expects those bins will be filled to capacity within a couple of weeks.
"Right now, we're just asking the fishermen to collect what they know is out there," Falco said. "Some have kept what was riled up in this last storm because they knew this event was coming.
"Everybody wins in this situation," Falco added. "The environment gets cleaned up and fishermen have a place to dispose of this stuff properly."
The program, which started in Hawaii, was introduced to Cape Ann in Gloucester in 2008 and aims to clean the ocean by collecting everything from nylon nets to wooden lobster traps and burning it to generate electricity,
Local fishermen and lobstermen say the project addresses a clear need — especially this year.
Lobsterman and Times columnist Peter K. Prybot of Lanesville said he recently spent hours untangling discarded gear from his vessel.
The powerful late-February nor'easter, aided by hurricane-force winds and astronomical high tides, really got the ocean moving, bringing the bottom up to the surface and snarling up lobster gear in places with bottom debris, especially along the outer edge of the Sandy Bay Breakwater, Prybot said.
"I'm still recuperating from two bad snarls," he said.
In one instance, two five-pot trawls came together and twisted around a mound of old rope and gnarled traps. In the other, a five-pot trawl wrapped around an approximately 12-foot, 500-pound piece of steel from the hull remnants of a Liberty ship that sank behind the breakwater in the 1940s.
"I had to tow both snarls to shallow water where I was finally able to cut free my traps after stretching the back and arms for several hours," he said.
The floating groundline ban in all Massachusetts waters to save whales has dramatically added to "ghost fishing" gear littering the bottom of the ocean floor, Prybot added.
"More fishermen would be willing to bring ashore ghost gear if an easy disposal option existed," he said.
The "Fishing for Energy" program accepts various types of gear to be burned, including plastic lines and nets, and recycles metal equipment such as rollers and chains used on draggers.
The program is part of a partnership that includes local port communities, the New Jersey-based Covanta, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Schnitzer Steel. Over 250 tons or 500,000 pounds of gear has been collected nationwide to date, officials say. Covanta provides 30-yard containers at different ports where fishermen can dump their gear at no cost.
It then collects and burns the gear for power at nearby company incinerators, which are equipped with emission control scrubbers that remove pollutants that otherwise would be released when the plastics and other material used in the gear are burned.
Gloucester is not currently a permanent "Fishing for Energy" port, but the program held a pair of collection events in the city in 2008 and collected more than 9 tons of gear in the process, Covanta spokesman James Regan said Friday.
Speakers and attendees scheduled to appear today include state Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, Rockport Selectmen Chairman Sandy Jacques, Rockport Town Administrator Linda Sanders, dozens of local fishermen, the Pigeon Cove Boat-Owners Association and others.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Jonathan L'Ecuyer can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3451 or jlecuyer@gloucestertimes.com.
By Jonathan L'Ecuyer
Staff Writer
ROCKPORT — Rockport has become the latest community to participate in a national program aimed at providing fishermen a cost-free solution to recycle and recover energy from old, derelict fishing gear.
When fishing gear is lost off boats, it's not really gone. In webs and rolling clumps, the nets, ropes and traps endure for decades as destructive artifacts of the fishery, suffocating life on the ocean floor, snaring fish and getting caught in propellers.
Now, gear collected in Rockport beginning today will be stripped of metals for recycling with the help of Schnitzer Steel, and processed into clean, renewable energy at the Covanta Energy-from-Waste facility in Haverhill.
An opening ceremony marking Rockport's "Fishing for Energy" partnership is scheduled for 11 a.m., on Pigeon Cove Wharf, located at the end of Breakwater Avenue. The rain location is Conference Room A in Town Hall.
Rockport Conservation Agent Geralyn Falco, who worked to bring the program to Rockport after fellow Conservation Commission member Rob Claypool suggested the town look into organizing a large scale marine debris clean up, said Covanta will install two of the large bins in which fishermen can deposit their gear.
She expects those bins will be filled to capacity within a couple of weeks.
"Right now, we're just asking the fishermen to collect what they know is out there," Falco said. "Some have kept what was riled up in this last storm because they knew this event was coming.
"Everybody wins in this situation," Falco added. "The environment gets cleaned up and fishermen have a place to dispose of this stuff properly."
The program, which started in Hawaii, was introduced to Cape Ann in Gloucester in 2008 and aims to clean the ocean by collecting everything from nylon nets to wooden lobster traps and burning it to generate electricity,
Local fishermen and lobstermen say the project addresses a clear need — especially this year.
Lobsterman and Times columnist Peter K. Prybot of Lanesville said he recently spent hours untangling discarded gear from his vessel.
The powerful late-February nor'easter, aided by hurricane-force winds and astronomical high tides, really got the ocean moving, bringing the bottom up to the surface and snarling up lobster gear in places with bottom debris, especially along the outer edge of the Sandy Bay Breakwater, Prybot said.
"I'm still recuperating from two bad snarls," he said.
In one instance, two five-pot trawls came together and twisted around a mound of old rope and gnarled traps. In the other, a five-pot trawl wrapped around an approximately 12-foot, 500-pound piece of steel from the hull remnants of a Liberty ship that sank behind the breakwater in the 1940s.
"I had to tow both snarls to shallow water where I was finally able to cut free my traps after stretching the back and arms for several hours," he said.
The floating groundline ban in all Massachusetts waters to save whales has dramatically added to "ghost fishing" gear littering the bottom of the ocean floor, Prybot added.
"More fishermen would be willing to bring ashore ghost gear if an easy disposal option existed," he said.
The "Fishing for Energy" program accepts various types of gear to be burned, including plastic lines and nets, and recycles metal equipment such as rollers and chains used on draggers.
The program is part of a partnership that includes local port communities, the New Jersey-based Covanta, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Schnitzer Steel. Over 250 tons or 500,000 pounds of gear has been collected nationwide to date, officials say. Covanta provides 30-yard containers at different ports where fishermen can dump their gear at no cost.
It then collects and burns the gear for power at nearby company incinerators, which are equipped with emission control scrubbers that remove pollutants that otherwise would be released when the plastics and other material used in the gear are burned.
Gloucester is not currently a permanent "Fishing for Energy" port, but the program held a pair of collection events in the city in 2008 and collected more than 9 tons of gear in the process, Covanta spokesman James Regan said Friday.
Speakers and attendees scheduled to appear today include state Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, Rockport Selectmen Chairman Sandy Jacques, Rockport Town Administrator Linda Sanders, dozens of local fishermen, the Pigeon Cove Boat-Owners Association and others.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Jonathan L'Ecuyer can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3451 or jlecuyer@gloucestertimes.com.