Ghostly encounters: Dealing with ghost gear in the Gulf of Carpentaria

Abstract

Ghost gear – abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear – has been recognised as a global environmental challenge since the mid-1980s, and yet little social science attention has fallen on the phenomenon. This paper explores how the burden of global fisheries, materialised through its gear, is experienced and managed. How is ghost gear encountered? How is it understood? What influence does it have, and what responses does it provoke? To consider these questions, the paper begins with detailing of an encounter with ghost gear and Aboriginal rangers on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. Understanding encounters as tangles of interlaced threads, rather than isolated intimacies, the paper also follows ghost gear beyond the experience of beach clean-up. How ghost gear journeys to this beach, and the mobilities and meetings that occur during its travels is explored, as well as the policy responses to ghost gear that figure it primarily as marine debris to be managed through territorial control as isolated ‘waste’. These more-than-human stories offer insights into the distributed agencies, complex relations, and differential responsibilities involved in the phenomenon of ghost gear, and efforts to deal with it as part of land-sea assemblies.