ASSOCIATED PRESS Lost and abandoned fishing equipment sits at the town dump in Scituate, Mass.

Program burns old fishing gear for electricity

An effort that began in Hawaii heads to New England, collecting lines, nets and more

BOSTON » When fishing gear is lost off boats, it's not really gone. In webs and rolling clumps, the nets, ropes and traps endure for decades as destructive artifacts of the fishery, suffocating life on the ocean floor, snaring fish and twisting into propellers.

But this "derelict gear" might actually be able to do some good. A program introduced in New England this year aims to clean the ocean by collecting everything from nylon nets to wooden lobster traps and burning it to generate electricity.

Fisherman Frank Mirarchi, 64, of Scituate, Mass., says he spends hours untangling discarded gear from his nets. It can be dangerous if heavy pieces snap free of the net.

Getting it out of the ocean is essential, he said. Turning it into electricity is a bonus.

"It's fabulous," said Mirarchi, who has been fishing for 46 years.

The "Fishing for Energy" program accepts various types of gear to be burned, including different plastic lines and nets. It recycles metal equipment such as chains used on draggers.

No one really knows how much of the gear is left in the ocean after being snared, discarded or abandoned, but it's significant. Mirarchi kept track one year and pulled up 5,000 pounds of marine junk on his boat alone.

The program, which started three years ago in Hawaii, is part of a partnership that includes local ports, the energy-from-waste company Covanta, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Schnitzer Steel.

It began in Hawaii to retrieve gear that was damaging coral reefs and entangling wildlife and has since collected more than 31 tons of the debris there, said Sarah Morison of NOAA's Marine Debris Program.

Covanta decided to expand the program to the mainland, starting in New England this past February. The company provides containers at different ports where fishermen can dump the gear at no cost. It then collects and burns the gear for power at nearby company incinerators, which are equipped with emission control scrubbers that remove pollutants that otherwise would be released when the plastics and other material used in the gear are burned.

Since February, the program has collected 47 tons of gear in New England.