GLOUCESTER POINT — William & Mary’s Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences & VIMS announced it has awarded $1.8 million to 13 organizations throughout the U.S. focused on the removal of derelict fishing gear.
This is the second year of subawards distributed through the National Fishing Trap Removal, Assessment and Prevention Program.
A scientific solution for a ghoulish problem
In the United States, commercial trap fisheries generate over $1 billion in annual revenue from seafood sales, referred to as landings. In the process, according to the Batten School & VIMS, each year, traps are lost due to vessel-gear interactions, storms and gear degradation. These “ghost traps” become inaccessible to fishermen but continue to function, resulting in mortality of both target and non-target species, habitat damage and reduced fishery landings.
A 2016 report found that removing just 10% of derelict crab pots and lobster traps could result in an additional $831 million in global landings annually, it added.
In 2023, the Batten School & VIMS was the recipient of an $8 million, four-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program to administer the National TRAP Program. In addition to distributing approximately $1.5 million annually to fund regional cleanup efforts, the program has established a standardized national database to evaluate the environmental and economic benefits of the removal efforts and to inform future policies.
In its first year of funding, the TRAP Program awarded over $1.4 million to fund 11 projects. So far, the Batten School & VIMS said those efforts have resulted in the removal of over 7,000 derelict traps totaling more than 300,000 pounds of debris.
“We are thrilled with the initial results from our inaugural TRAP Program recipients. Their success is a testament to the impact that locally-designed solutions can have on global issues,” said Kirk Havens, director of the Batten School & VIMS Center for Coastal Resources Management, which administers the TRAP Program under the direction of co-principal investigators Professor Donna Bilkovic and Associate Professor Andrew Scheld. “Our second round of recipients have demonstrated that same creativity, thoughtfulness and local community engagement in their project proposals, and we are proud to support them as they work for the benefit of their communities and marine ecosystems.”
This year, $1.8 million in grant funding will be distributed across 13 projects in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, South Carolina, Florida, Washington and California. Recipients anticipate the removal of over 8,000 ghost traps and the creation of 195 jobs, mostly for commercial fishers, according to the Batten School & VIMS.
Funding recipients will begin their cleanup efforts in January 2026 and will be required to submit standardized data on their progress which will be analyzed by the Policy Innovation Lab, a partnership between the Batten School & VIMS and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, to explore drivers of derelict trap abundance, bycatch, and other ecological or economic variables. This information will help inform state and federal policy recommendations to improve derelict trap prevention and mitigation, it said.
Visit the National TRAP Program website for additional information and statistics from first-round projects.
