Somewhere in the North Pacific Ocean, there are fishing nets that nobody owns anymore.
Abandoned by vessels that snagged them on underwater obstacles, lost in storms, or deliberately cut loose rather than hauled back — these "ghost nets" drift through the ocean for years, sometimes decades, catching and killing fish, sea turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals with mechanical indifference. No fisherman set them. No fisherman benefits from them. They just kill, endlessly, while nobody watches.
For over three years, a project based at Hawaiʻi Pacific University has been paying people to go get them back.
**The Bounty Project**
Launched in November 2022, **HPU's Bounty Project** — run by the university's **Center for Marine Debris Research (HPU CMDR)** — takes a straightforward approach to a notoriously difficult problem: it **pays commercial fishermen** to recover derelict fishing gear during their regular ocean trips.
Fishermen operating in the North Pacific — including in areas near the North Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world — are already out there. They already have the boats, the equipment, and the knowledge of where debris congregates. The Bounty Project provides financial incentives to transform their regular fishing operations into **ocean cleanup missions** at no extra voyage cost.
When fishermen recover abandoned nets, lines, and floats, they bring them back to port. The HPU CMDR team collects, weighs, processes, and records the haul.
**84 Metric Tons**
In just over three years, the results speak for themselves:
- 🎣 **84 metric tons** (185,000 pounds) of derelict fishing gear removed from the North Pacific - 📍 Recovery operations in the **North Pacific Garbage Patch** itself — one of only three known programmes actively working in this remote, notoriously difficult-to-reach area - 🐢 Ghost gear prevented from continuing to entangle endangered marine wildlife — including Hawaiian monk seals, sea turtles, seabirds, and fish - 🌊 Reef and shoreline habitats in Hawaii protected from ghost nets that would otherwise eventually wash ashore or sink to the seafloor
The programme is funded by an award from the **NOAA Marine Debris Program**, with matching funds from **Ocean Conservancy**.
**What Happens to the Gear?**
Here's where the story gets elegant. Fishing nets are mostly made of synthetic fibres — nylon, polyester, polypropylene — that are difficult to recycle conventionally but have high energy content.
The recovered gear is primarily processed through Hawaii's **"Net-to-Energy" system** — a facility that shreds the nets and uses them as fuel to **generate electricity**, keeping the material out of landfill and extracting useful energy in the process. Some material is also being channelled into experimental **road pavement projects**, where recycled plastic fibres can improve asphalt durability.
Ghost gear that was killing sea turtles in the Pacific last month may be powering Hawaiian homes next month.
**Why Ghost Gear Matters**
The problem the Bounty Project is tackling is enormous. The **Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations** estimates that approximately **640,000 tonnes** of fishing gear are lost or abandoned in the ocean every year — around **10% of all ocean plastic**. Ghost gear is considered the deadliest form of marine plastic, responsible for the entanglement deaths of hundreds of thousands of marine animals annually.
Removing it at sea — before it reaches coastlines or sinks — is far more effective than trying to recover it later. The Bounty Project's model of **using existing fishing infrastructure** to achieve cleanup, rather than deploying expensive dedicated cleanup vessels, makes it one of the most cost-efficient approaches developed so far.
**Scaling the Model**
HPU CMDR is currently one of only **three known organisations** actively removing debris from the distant North Pacific Garbage Patch. The model is generating interest from researchers and policymakers looking at how incentive-based cleanup programmes could be scaled across other fishing communities and ocean regions.
Eighty-four tons down. Hundreds of thousands still out there — but the sea is a little cleaner, and a few nets are generating electricity instead of catching turtles. 🌊🐢⚡
*Sources: Good News Network · Hawaiʻi Pacific University Center for Marine Debris Research · NOAA Marine Debris Program · National Fisherman · Ocean Conservancy · Saving Seafood*
