Ghost nets are fishing nets that have been lost accidentally or abandoned at sea and incredibly, in the past 20 months alone, over 60,000 metres of discarded nets have been collected in Australian seas. The United Nations General Assembly has now identified ghost nets (and marine debris) as an issue of international concern. The nets travel through the ocean with the currents and tides, capturing endangered sea turtles, crocodiles, sharks and other marine animals in a lethal process called ghost fishing.
The Carpentaria Ghost Nets Programme (CGNP) involves removing decades of accumulated ghost nets from the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria & Torres Straits to stop them re-entering the ocean. The rangers record information about the nets which will help negotiations to stop the problem at source. A big part of the project for the rangers is when they are able to find animals, especially turtles, still alive and are able to release them back into the wild. The project works within five natural resource management regions including Cape York, Northern Gulf, Southern Gulf, Torres Straits and the Northern Territory. It is managed by the Northern Gulf Natural Resource Management Group.
In 2005, this project was recognised for its work, taking out the coveted Queensland Coastcare Award. Coastcare is a community group movement, consisting of 60,000 volunteers working to protect our coastline, and the achievements of the CGNP rangers made an exceptional winner.
Even though the work is physically demanding numbers of participating Indigenous caring for country groups has grown from seven in 2005 to eighteen today. Of that 18, seven of them have never performed any form of "caring for country" work in the past and have enthusiastically elected to become involved in ghost nets work. Some of these Sea Ranger teams are trained professionals with the latest equipment, while others are father and son teams equipped mainly with passion and determination.
In the past 18 months the Rangers (approximately 90) participating in the project have removed from the accessible parts of the coastline (equivalent distance as Adelaide to Perth) 2174 pieces of net with an average size of 28.3 metres. This equates to approximately 58.896 kilometres or approximately 60tonnes; enough net to cross Sydney Harbour Bridge over 100 times. The Sea Rangers demonstrate the huge impact dedicated Coastcarers can have on our coastline.
The largest net was a 6-tonne Taiwanese Gill net found off the coast of Arnhem Land in November 2006. The removal of this net was a massive cooperative effort, using the resources from Customs, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, Dhimurru Rangers, NT Parks & Wildlife and 2 x local charter vessels. It took five very long hours to get this net from the waters edge to the landfill.
Individuals learn skills in project planning & management as well as information recording and reporting. They are encouraged to design their own work plans to cater for the resources they have, realise the resources they need to complete the task & how to get them. These are valuable skills as they can be transferred to other ‘caring for country' projects such as coastal surveillance of illegal fishing operations.
The flexibility of the project allows for the high variation in literacy and numeracy skills from simple data entry in the survey sheets supplied to GIS mapping The project encourages individuals to self assess and improve their skills; continually raising the bar by providing a range of training from one-on-one numeracy & literacy to courses in GIS mapping.
For more information and learn more on this initiative:-
Contact: Riki Gunn - riki.ghostnets@northerngulf.com.au or go to
http://www.ghostnets.com.au |
发表于 25-7-2012 20:04:25
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