Net Your Problem, an environmental entity that collaborates with others to promote recycling of worn-out commercial fishing gear, is working with Copper River Watershed Project (CRWP) to collect gillnet and seine net in Cordova from Aug. 2-4.
“We are collecting nets on those dates at the Refuse Department facility of Whitshed Road from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” said Shae Bowman, operations manager for CRWP. “We accept nets, corklines, leadlines, and more, but all parts of the net need to be separated and hanging twine needs to be removed from gillnets … All nets need to be free of debris like sticks rocks, and trash.”
CRWP is also looking for volunteers to fill two-hour shifts for this project.
Nicole Baker, the founder of Net Your Problem, is a former North Pacific groundfish fisheries observer who became actively involved finding ways to recycle fishing nets from Unalaska. Since 2015 she has worked with commercial harvesters whose only other option in many cases is to dump the nets into landfills. Baker also works at the University of Washington in Seattle as a research scientist to pay the bills, but is expanding her footprint to other fishing ports to make this a full-time effort.
Erin Adams is the U.S. Northeast division coordinator for Net Your Problem. Adams began working in cooperative fisheries research in 2006 with the School for Marine Science and Technology at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and the scallop industry in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She has conducted marine research on boats in the North Atlantic, Caribbean, South Pacific, and in the Bering Sea. Most recently, Adams worked as a scientist collecting oceanographic data with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Net Your Problem works with a variety of materials, from midwater trawl, codend, bottom trawl net and seine web, to purse line and twines from gillnet and seine gear.
For more information about Net Your Problem, visit www.netyourproblem.com. Those interested in volunteering for the CRWP net recycling event next week should email Bowman at shae@copperriver.org.
