, 2012). One example of an incentive program for proper trap disposal is the Fishing for Energy Partnership between the NOAA Marine Debris Program, Covanta Energy

Corporation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Schnitzer Steel. This partnership, launched in 2008, provides commercial fishermen with a place to dispose of gear at no cost. Fishing nets, line, and traps are collected and trap parts are either recycled or converted into energy. By the end of December 2013, the partnership had collected over 2.2 million pounds of fishing gear at 41 ports in 9 states (National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, 2013). Additionally, it is not uncommon for traps to be lost by vandalism when a competitor intentionally cuts the lines of another’s traps to prevent fishing, or by trap theft (Clark et al., 2012). One way to combat theft is by educating find more fishing communities. If fishermen understand how IWR-1 clinical trial ghost fishing adversely affects a fishery and local habitats, they might be less likely to discard traps or engage in theft. Additional research is needed to understand fishermen’s motivations for intentional trap loss and to determine how educational efforts can help to mitigate the problem. Methods exist to minimize the potential impact of

DFTs. Removal efforts can reduce the number of DFTs and should target high-loss areas often associated with high fishing efforts (Giordano et al., 2010) and areas with known accumulations of DFTs (Uhrin et al., 2014). Removal is not always feasible, though, because it can be cost prohibitive to retrieve and dispose of DFTs. Several

states, including Mississippi, North Diflunisal Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, developed DFT removal programs in the 1990s (Guillory et al., 2001), but funding for programs has not been continuous. In Puget Sound, derelict trap recovery has been part of the Northwest Straits Initiative’s derelict fishing gear program since 2002; currently, recovery of DFTs occurs in known areas of heavy fishing effort on a semi-regular basis (Northwest Straits Initiative, 2014). From 2008 to 2012, Virginia resource managers implemented a conservation measure to fund fishermen to retrieve over 32,000 items of derelict fishing gear from the lower Chesapeake Bay (Bilkovic et al., 2014). As annual loss rates continue to be fairly high, short-term or one-time efforts are not likely to keep up with the loss rates of trap fishing. Based on the success of Virginia’s efforts, which were funded by Federal emergency supplemental funding following the closure of the winter blue crab dredge fishery, we suggest that if the opportunity arises other emergency supplemental funds be considered for DFT removal efforts by fishermen in order to reduce the environmental impacts of DFTs (Havens et al., 2011).