Marine debris is deadly. Abandoned fishing gear unintentionally traps, entangles and kills roughly a million marine animals every year. Fish and shorebirds mistaking plastics for food die of internal injury and starvation. In Hawai’i, entanglements, hookings and ingestion is a primary cause of death for the endangered Hawaiian monk seal, the endangered hawksbill sea turtle, the threatened green sea turtle and several species of seabirds.
MDF is funding the Hawaiʻi Marine Animal Response Marine Debris Program, which supports a volunteer crew of SCUBA divers who work near-shore to remove recreational fishing debris. We are also supporting Beat Debris, a citizen-science initiative that relies on divers to remove debris on their own unstructured dive activities. Together, these two programs have removed nearly 30 miles of fishing line, 6,000 hooks and 10,000 pounds of debris off the shore of Oahu, creating safer habitat for Hawaii’s most vulnerable marine species.
