DESG to Train Community Members on Marine Debris Removal

Delaware Sea Grant (DESG) has been awarded funds from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to train volunteers in the use of side-scan sonar to find and remove derelict crab pots from Delaware’s recreational blue crab fishery

The award is funded through a 27-million-dollar national project that enables the National Sea Grant program to address the prevention and removal of debris in marine and Great Lakes environments throughout the U.S.

In Delaware, DESG will work to reduce the prevalence of derelict—or abandoned—crab pots from waters used by the recreational crabbing industry in Delaware’s Inland Bays through community education and working with volunteers.

The project will transition Delaware’s volunteer-based derelict crab pot round-ups from a highly university-dependent project to a primarily community-based activity while also supporting outreach and education programming for residents on responsible crabbing practices. Because commercial crabbing is not permitted in the study area, this project highlights the contribution that the recreational crabbing industry can have towards the prevalence of derelict crab pots.

Chris Petrone, director of DESG’s Marine Advisory Service, said that while DESG and University of Delaware faculty and students have conducted cleanup work in the past, they only have a certain amount of capacity to continue conducting this work. In order to properly remove marine debris from the bays, volunteers and community scientists are needed to tackle the issue.

“With side-scan sonar images already in-hand, we know where hundreds of derelict crab pots are; our crew just can’t get to them all,” said Petrone. “We need well-trained volunteers. With this funding from NOAA and the National Sea Grant Office, we will be training those community members who want to take action on removing derelict crab pots from the Inland Bays. We will be providing them with some of the tools needed to find and remove these well-hidden crab pots that continue to damage the environment, reduce recreational blue crab catches, and are a threat to wildlife, boaters, and swimmers.”

Petrone said it is important for members of the public to be properly trained to safely remove these lost or abandoned crab pots.

“Submerged, derelict crab pots—as opposed to those that are exposed at low tide or have washed up in marshes or on beaches—are muddy, heavy, and can potentially harm humans and vessels if improperly recovered,” said Petrone. “We encourage any individuals or groups that are interested in helping with Inland Bays derelict crab pot recovery to contact us and we’ll get them set up.”

UD and DESG have been partnering on debris removal projects using side-scan sonar since 2019, when Kate Fleming, who was a coastal ecology specialist with DESG at the time, and Art Trembanis, a professor at UD’s School of Marine Science and Policy, ventured out into the Rehoboth Bay to conduct exploratory surveys.

After finding 160 derelict crab pots in just one small area of the bays, they realized that derelict crab pots posed a big problem for the Delaware Inland Bays.

Moving forward, Petrone said DESG will re-scan the Inland Bays to get a handle on where the derelict crab pots are, as the assumption is that more have been added to the bays since the last sonar scans in 2021.

They are also looking to use in-person, educational workshops and film associated videos to train community members and community scientists on how to remove derelict crab pots.

The in-person workshops will be hosted in recreational crabbing communities to teach residents about responsible crabbing practices. Volunteers assisting in the implementation of these events will also refurbish crab pots that were removed from Delaware’s Inland Bays. Refurbished pots will then be used as the basis of future outreach and education programming, which will highlight the impacts of ghost fishing, ways to minimize pot loss, and ways to minimize impacts through the use of bycatch reduction devices, or BRDs.

DESG, in collaboration with the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays and DNREC, will also conduct crab pot ‘roundups.’

“These will be advertised if volunteers are interested in helping—particularly those with boats they don’t mind getting dirty,” said Petrone. “DESG will also be conducting training workshops for those volunteers and groups that want to set off and do their own small- or large-scale roundups on their own.”

Article by Adam Thomas