U.S. outpacing Canada in marine cleanup efforts, which could save millions of creatures from death each year

Larry Pynn -

They're known almost benignly as derelict fishing gear, but that doesn't begin to describe the toll they continue to exact on marine life.

Lost in storms or torn off by rocks, commercial fishing nets and traps can continue to fish on the ocean bottom for countless years after their owners have written them off and returned to safe harbour.

The extent of the problem is massive and its impact significant, as evidenced by just one small area of B.C.'s Boundary Bay near the Canada-U.S. border.

In a $34,000 pilot project using side-scan sonar, the Ministry of Environment in January detected no fewer than 1,829 crab traps, most of them commercial, within a 5.5-square-kilometre area. They'd been lost in storms, cut by propellers, or perhaps tossed overboard with not enough rope to retrieve them.

Working with Northwest Straits Initiative of Washington state, the program removed 218 of those traps in February, said ministry spokesman Colin Grewar.

B.C. also partnered with Parks Canada in February to remove part of a large purse seine net located almost 30 metres below the ocean surface off Pender Island's Tilly Point, at a cost of $10,000.

Of the 218 crab traps recovered, 189 used rot cord as legally required, meaning that in perhaps a couple of months the traps would open up and stop catching crabs. The legal traps contained 63 Dungeness and 31 red rock crabs.

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