• Studies and NGOs have documented lost or abandoned gear from open-net aquaculture operations in coastal areas across cold and temperate latitudes, where fish farming in the sea expanded rapidly in the 1980s and ’90s.
• In Chile, Greece and Canada, for example, observers have reported finding disused buoys, sections of rusting platforms, expanded polystyrene, net cages and other debris washed up on shorelines, or sunk in the water.
• Guidelines published by the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), a worldwide alliance of groups seeking solutions to fishing gear pollution, say neglected or mismanaged aquaculture gear can disperse in the environment and break down into debris of various sizes, posing risks such as entrapping marine life, damaging habitats or contributing to microplastic pollution.
• Some industry groups say current regulations and practices suffice to prevent ongoing pollution and they are working to resolve legacy contamination.

“People ask us how much [fishing] gear is lost every year. The answer to that is one that nobody really knows,” said Joel Baziuk, associate director of GGGI, which is a project of the Washington, D.C.-based NGO the Ocean Conservancy. “But what we can say is that wherever we look for it — where there’s fishing going on — we find it. And I would imagine it would be a very similar situation when it comes to decommissioned aquaculture farms. If you look for them, it will be there,” he told Mongabay.

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