Canada's fight against Ghost Gear

Canada is a world leader in keeping our waters clean
Abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear, known as ghost gear, is:

• A significant source of marine pollution
• A major threat to:
  • Animals
  • Habitats
  • Fish stocks
  • Food security
  • Livelihoods

Canada's Ghost Gear Program is pioneering ocean conservation efforts
With our partners’ help, we are seeing results:

• All commercial harvesters in Canada are required to report their lost gear
• using DFO’s easy to use reporting tool

This helps us:

• prevent loss
• retrieve gear
• return gear to harvesters
• support responsible disposal

The Ghost Gear Fund supported projects in these areas:

• Retrieval
• Responsible Disposal
• Innovative Technologies
• International Leadership

Retrieval partners collected:

• over 2,233 tonnes of lost gear
• the weight of 297 school buses
• over 36,049 units of gear
• 857 kilometres of rope
• the length of 14,050 NHL-sized rinks

Now we’re building on our success to prevent ghost gear
We’re creating an action plan.
Together, we can:

• Prevent animal entanglements
• Remove harmful plastics
• Make navigation safer
• Protect sensitive species and habitats
• Preserve and enhance commercial fisheries stocks

Consumer demand is growing for sustainably harvested fisheries
With our partners, Canada is protecting our oceans and maintaining sustainable fisheries for generations to come
Learn more about Canada’s Ghost Gear Program
canada.ca/ghostgear