?On July 12, local scuba divers boarded the Humbolt, a 45-foot scuba-diving vessel donated by Waterhouse Charters in Mission Bay, and began a project to clean up hundreds of pounds of abandoned netting off the coast of the Coronado Islands. The underwater cleanup effort was organized by Ocean Defenders Alliance (ODA), the only nonprofit marine conservation organization dedicated to the technical, yet dangerous, task of cleaning up “ghost gear”\u2014 abandoned lobster and crab pots, nets and lines. “If there is any commercial fishing that goes on, they typically lose 10 to 15 percent of their nets,” said ODA founder and president Kurt Lieber. “Ghost netting is very difficult to see and people can get caught and drown in it, and because it\u2019s hard to see, animals get stuck in it too.” Currently, the Coast Guard picks up ghost gear down to 50 feet underwater, due to its danger to recreational boats. Deeper below the surface, however, ghost gear \u2014 including now-illegal drift netting from the 1990s \u2014 remains entangled among reefs. The tangled nets can trap marine mammals, birds, and other sea creatures, potentially disrupting the ocean ecology. According to Lieber, fishing boats do not typically have scuba divers onboard, so when nets or gear get caught on something underwater, they are simply cut, abandoned and paid for by insurance companies. “It\u2019s a dumping ground in the ocean, and there\u2019s no legal ramifications for it,” he said. “I\u2019m working with some lawyers to get a bill passed to make insurance companies liable for that.” The ease of cutting nets, meanwhile, is not equal to the ease of retrieving the manmade litter. “It\u2019s a long and tedious process,” he said, recalling one project involving a 1,400-pound net in only 80 feet of water that took months to complete due to harsh conditions. Since ODA\u2019s establishment in 2002, Lieber and his team have cleaned up more than 12,000 pounds of abandoned netting in Southern California. “The only way we find these nets is if people report them to us,” he said. Although ODA is based out of Huntington Beach, Lieber urges San Diego divers who see any type of ghost gear to report it to ODA immediately. “There\u2019s no one doing what we do,” he said. “We\u2019re willing to come down here.” To report sightings of ghost gear or to donate to ODA, visit www.ocean-defenders.org, email contact@ocean-defenders.org or call Lieber at (714) 875-5881. Panel event to address big bay\u2019s \u2018dirty little secret\u2019<\/b> On Tuesday, Aug. 9 at 6 p.m., San Diego Coastkeeper and the Environmental Health Coalition will host “Signs of the Tide: San Diego Bay\u2019s Dirty Little Secret,” a free panel discussion on the origin of contaminated material lurking beneath the water in the San Diego Bay, its effect on marine and human life and the 10-year history of delayed cleanup efforts. “Signs of the Tide” will take place at the Memorial Recreation Center, located at 2902 Marcy Ave. For more information or to get involved, call (619) 758-7743 or visit www.sdcoastkeeper.org.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
?On July 12, local scuba divers boarded the Humbolt, a 45-foot scuba-diving vessel donated by Waterhouse Charters in Mission Bay, and began a project to clean up hundreds of pounds of abandoned netting off the coast of the Coronado Islands. The underwater cleanup effort was organized by Ocean Defenders Alliance (ODA), the only nonprofit marine […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":284636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Divers probe depths to fish out abandoned \u2018ghost netting\u2019","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}