LIHUE — The Surfrider Kauai North Pacific Eel Trap Project wants your pictures of discarded eel traps and eel trap tubes.
“Mahalo to the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, hereafter referred to as GGGI, for their support on this project,” said Dr. Carl Berg, senior scientist for Surfrider Kauai. “We’d also like to thank everyone who has participated in the project by sending us pictures of found traps. If you find eel trap entrances, hereafter referred to as ETE, or eel trap tubes, or ETT, on a beach near you, please take a photo and send it to hagfish@surfrider.org.”
Because the ETE and ETT are made of unrecyclable plastic, Surfrider Kauai asks that the found traps be disposed of properly once the photo is taken.
The North Pacific Eel Trap Project is an international collaborative effort to reduce the number of discarded eel traps and their impact on marine and coastal environments, particularly the endangered Hawaiian monk seal.
Surfrider Foundation Kauai reports that 2024 was a record-breaking year for the collection of eel trap entrances and tubes. A record 9,279 ETE and 347 ETT were collected from the Hawaiian archipelago, 5.9 times the number collected in 2023. This is likely due to a major shift in ocean currents bringing the North Pacific Garbage Patch closer to the Hawaiian Islands.
ETE are cone-shaped objects used primarily by Asian fisheries to trap eels and hagfish, which are eel-like creatures. The traps get loose and travel on ocean currents, landing on Hawaii’s beaches where they can get stuck on the snouts of curious monk seal pups, causing them to starve if not caught and rescued.
ETE and ETT do not degrade and contribute to plastic marine debris and microplastic pollution of the seas.
“Our four-year total is 21,504 of ETE and ETT from the full range of the Hawaiian Island chain,” Berg said. “Partners also did collections in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.”
During the project’s first year, supported by the GGGI, Surfrider, and the Eel Trap Project, extensive collections were made from legacy sites or those that had not been cleaned before. For example, 3,232 traps were collected from a single cleanup on Kahoolawe Island. The four main islands of Kauai, Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii Island, with regularly scheduled cleanups, averaged 687 pieces of ETE and ETT collected and reported monthly.
“Once we had a sizable collection of traps to examine, we discovered distinct differences between eel traps used by Japanese fishermen and those used by Chinese and South Korean fishermen,” Berg said. “Some of the Japanese style eel trap tubes were branded with the names of the fishing port, boat, or fisherman’s name — leading us directly to the source. Those areas had been devastated by the 2011 tsunami so that the natural calamity may have lost gear, rather than fishermen discarding broken gear at sea.”
The North Pacific Eel Trap Project was done in collaboration with Dr. Satoquo Seino, Hideo Kinoshita of Kyushu University, Japan, Ai Iwamoto of Surfrider Foundation Japan, Eo Jin of the University of Korea, Seoul, Ning Yen, Chieh-shen Hu, Chi-hsuan-Hsy of Indigo Waters Institute, Taiwan, Barbara Weidner, Scott McCubbins, Cynthia Welti of Surfrider Foundation Kauai, Megan Lamson Royer, Paige White of Hawaii Pacific University, Dr. James Carlton of Williams College, Lauren Blickley, Hanna Lilley of the Surfrider Foundation.
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Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 808-245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
