Clock ticking for patrols battling ghost net ocean plastics in Gulf of Carpentaria

Australia Broadcast Center

17-06-2025

It is rubbish season in northern Australia.
When the winds pick up after the monsoon storms, tonnes of plastic trash and discarded fishing nets gathered in the Gulf of Carpentaria make for the coastline.
Indigenous rangers patrolling the coastline find ankle-deep plastic rubbish, lids with turtle bite marks and remnants of turtles caught in discarded fishing nets.
But with no guarantee of continued funding after the end of this month, they are calling for ongoing support to deal with the amount of plastic waste they see increasing each year.
Scientists estimate 8-to-10 million tonnes of plastic end up in the ocean each year.
In the next 25 years, they say, plastic may outweigh fish in the ocean.
Two per cent of the world's fishing gear is estimated to become ghost nets — lost, discarded or abandoned fishing gear.
Senior ranger Clive Nunggarrgalu works with the Numbulwar Numburindi Rangers in west Arnhem Land, where six rangers patrol and care for 300 kilometres of remote coastline.
Many of the bays and beaches where ghost nets and marine debris accumulate are only accessible for a few weeks.
"When the nets come, they trap animals like buffaloes, turtles and dolphins," he said.
"We can cut the nets and free turtles, but even buffaloes, young buffaloes, get trapped in the nets along the sand."
He said the tides often buried the nets.
"Some of the beaches, they look great, but the rubbish is underneath the sand," he said.
For the past four years, the federally funded $15 million Ghost Net Initiative has assisted 22 Indigenous ranger groups with clean-up efforts.
They have worked alongside 3,600 people to remove 160,000 kilograms of marine debris, as well as 860 ghost nets.
Some of the waste removed has been transformed into reusable fishing gear, art and woven baskets.
Since 2018, Sea Shepherd's marine debris campaigner, Grahame Lloyd, has worked with the Dhimurru rangers in north-east Arnhem Land.
They worked together to clean up a remote, 14km sacred turtle nesting beach.
"In the two COVID years, more plastic had washed up on the beach than had accumulated seven years prior," Mr Lloyd said.
"It was that bad that in certain sections, we were using shovels because the rubbish came halfway up your calves.
"You had to stand in the plastic to get that top layer off."
He said that, without funds to keep the beaches clean, each new season would bring another stockpile of plastic waste .
Ghost Net Initiative funding has allowed researchers to use drones and AI systems to help locate and retrieve nets on hard-to-reach coastlines.
Charles Darwin University researcher Aliesha Havala has been working with Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers using drones to find nets.
She said they found a ghost net almost every kilometre of coastline they searched — among rocks, buried deep in sand or caught in mangrove estuaries.
The drones can detect a portion of ghost net as small as 50 centimetres.
Using AI programming, the drones then send rangers the coordinates.
"A lot of the time these ghost nets are either obscured or they are buried, essentially big icebergs under the sand," she said.
"Some of the nets are so large they need to be winched out of the sand or winched onto a vessel to be removed."
The marine debris season for the Anindilyakwa Rangers has well and truly started.
Two more nets have washed up in areas where the rangers removed some a few weeks ago, Ms Havala said.
At the UN Ocean conference in France last week, federal Environment Minister Murray Watt signalled his support for a global treaty to end plastic pollution.
He highlighted the need to strengthen regional partnerships tackling ghost nets and single-use plastics in the Pacific Ocean and Arafura and Timor seas.
In October, the Australian government joined the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, committing $1.4 million to regional partnerships with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
The ABC asked Mr Watt and Parks Australia if Ghost Nets Initiative funding would continue but did not receive a direct answer.