Indigenous ranger groups across northern Australia are removing tons of ghost nets and other marine debris from some of the country’s most remote coastline, where abandoned fishing gear kills turtles, dugongs and sharks long after it is lost.The nets ride ocean currents into the Gulf of Carpentaria from Southeast Asia, and removing them is slow and dangerous work, though rangers are now using drones and AI to find nets faster than before.After funding for the patrols nearly lapsed, the Australian government committed AU$25 million ($18 million) over four years, most of it to continue the cleanups, and AU$4.5 million ($3.2 million) to stop nets from reaching the ocean in the first place.Rangers and advocates say the fix is not to blame any single country, but to address the problem at its source and keep supporting the Traditional Owners who care for this coastline.
On a remote beach on Groote Eylandt, a large island in Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, Kirsten Eden and her colleagues found a fishing net that someone had tried to make disappear. It had been burned and melted into a lump while at sea, and thrown overboard. It didn’t sink, but floated to shore as a wheel of hard plastic — once a net perhaps 60 meters (about 197 feet) long, now breaking into the microplastics that will outlast us all.
