By KiddieDaily Editors · 2026-06-29 · 3 min read · 1 source

India’s fishers confront homegrown ‘ghost gear’ problem

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Facebook Linkedin Threads Whatsapp Reddit Email Page link Cite article Across India’s west coast, fishers often abandon or discard their damaged gear at sea after seabed snags, mounting economic pressures, and increasingly crowded near-shore waters make recovery difficult, creating a constant stream of “ghost gear” into the Arabian Sea.Once lost, fishing gear continues to function, whether it drifts through the water column or settles on the seabed, trapping marine life or entangling marine habitat.Incentive schemes, retrieval efforts, recycling initiatives and other efforts to reduce harm show promise in some places in India. But experts say they tend to remain piecemeal and face common challenges such as a lack of recycling infrastructure and dependence on short-term funding.Many experts say the key to addressing India’s ghost gear problem lies in moving from ad hoc initiatives to institutionalized systems that intervene across the gear’s lifecycle, from design and use to end-of-life disposal.See All Key Ideas KOCHI, India — In the early light at Thoppumpady fishing harbor in the city of Kochi, coils of blue and green nylon nets lay heaped on the concrete docks, stiff with salt after a long night at sea. Many had been patched and repatched so often that they were barely holding together.

Nets too damaged to mend are often cut loose offshore. Once they sink, few are ever recovered. Across India’s west coast, lost fishing gear known as “ghost gear” has become a significant source of marine pollution.

Nets vanish whole or in fragments, slipping into the waters of the Arabian Sea where they continue trapping fish, turtles and other marine life long after fishers abandon them. India operates one of the world’s largest marine fishing sectors, supporting an estimated 14.5 million livelihoods along more than 7,500 kilometers (4,660 miles) of coastline. While national estimates are scarce, a 2022 study in the southwestern state of Kerala, where Kochi is located, found that fishers lost, abandoned or discarded about 21% of their fishing gear annually.

That’s more than 10 times the global average of 1.82% estimated by another study, which highlights the scale of material entering India’s marine environment. Despite growing concern among researchers and conservationists, India lacks a systematic way to track, retrieve or recycle lost fishing gear, as well as accessible mechanisms to collect and safely dispose of end-of-life nets and other equipment before they are discarded at sea. The government regulates fisheries tightly in many respects — from mesh sizes and seasonal bans to licensing requirements — but what happens after gear is lost, discarded or reaches the end of its usable life remains largely outside the system.

Kerala, one of India’s most important fishing states, provides a clear snapshot of the challenges. The Kerala study, a survey of 390 fishers, found that vessels lost, abandoned or discarded an average of 167.5 kilograms (369 pounds) of gear per vessel each year. Scaling this across the state’s roughly 28,000–34,000 marine fishing vessels suggests thousands of metric tons of ghost gear enter the Arabian Sea annually from Kerala alone.

The findings show that ghost gear is not solely the result of accidents at sea: Fishers reported losing 11.6% of their gear each year, abandoning 7.5% and deliberately discarding 2.3%. While ghost gear is often associated with storms and cyclones, researchers working along India’s west coast say much of it is lost during routine fishing operations. Rocky seabeds, poorly mapped fishing grounds and conflicts between mechanized and traditional fleets all contribute to gear loss.

The problems are particularly acute in crowded near-shore waters such as those off Kerala, where trawlers, gillnet fishers and smaller vessels compete for space. “Seabed snags are the most common cause,” Abhijieet Thakare, an independent fisheries expert and coastal management practitioner, told Mongabay. “We routinely see nets and lines caught on rocky outcrops.”

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