Ghost fishing gear

A large mass of ghost fishing gear - i.e. any fishing equipment that has been lost, abandoned, or deliberately discarded at sea and continues to fish on its own! - was removed from Brighton beach Monday after washing ashore overnight. A member of the public alerted the council’s Seafront Office, prompting a rapid coordinated clean-up by staff and volunteers from the Brighton & Hove Seafront Team, Leave No Trace Brighton and the Anglers National Line Recycling Scheme (ANLRS).

The net was a dense tangle of green rope and floats, described by Leave No Trace Brighton as one of the most damaging forms of slow-degrading marine debris. Lost gear of this kind can take centuries to break down, continuing to catch wildlife, abrade seabed habitats, and fragment into microplastics. The team on site - including Abi from the Seafront Office, Coral from Leave No Trace Brighton, and Steve from ANLRS - estimated the haul at roughly 200 kg of plastic.

Once secured, the net was cut, lifted clear of the shingle, and transported off the beach for processing and recycling. Brighton has developed a recognised system for disposing of fishing line and netting since installing dedicated deposit points along the seafront, and the recovered gear will now enter that recycling stream rather than be consigned to landfill.

Removing ghost gear on land is considered critical: once the tide reclaims heavy netting, it can be lost for months or years, drifting through marine habitats and continuing to entangle animals. Yesterday’s operation prevented that cycle from beginning again. 

Although I did not witness this personally, Facebook and Instagram video stills capture the scale of the recovery - a sprawling, buoy-studded mass on the shingle - and the effort required to deal with it quickly. It marks another example of the growing collaboration between council teams, volunteer groups and national schemes to keep Brighton’s coastline clear of harmful debris. This is far from an isolated incident - some four years ago, Brighton and Hove News reported on divers, off the Brighton coast, recovering 400 lb of ghost fishing gear. 

See also Leave No Trace.