Lobster Pot Recovery After Storm Arwen with Duncan Simpson & Andrew Jack

In the winter of 2021, an unusually powerful cyclone called Storm Arwen wreaked havoc on the United Kingdom, Ireland, and France. In Scotland alone, on land, it was estimated that over 8 million trees were damaged or affected by the storm. The damage was no less under the water. Andrew Jack, a fisherman that works in the Moray Firth of the North Sea, lost almost 600 lobster traps in the angry sea. After contacting Duncan Simpson of UK Ghost Diving, the two collaborated (with their teams) on the retrieval of this lost gear that, at first, seemed like it couldn't be done.

Highlights

• Why was Storm Arwen different and so detrimental?
• Why was the retrieval of all of the lobster traps seemingly unlikely?
• What made it possible?

Resources

• If you are in the UK area and need ghost gear retrieval help, contact Ghost Diving UK.
• Article by Healthy Seas about the lobster trap retrieval.

How YOU Can Help

• Donate to Healthy Seas so they can conduct even more clean-up missions.

Click here for a transcript of this episode. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe, rate and review it! This helps to boost its visibility.

Healthy Seas is a marine conservation organization whose mission is to tackle the ghost fishing phenomenon and turn this waste into an opportunity for a more circular economy. They do this through clean-ups, prevention, education, and working with partners who recycle and repurpose this material. The podcast is hosted by Crystal DiMiceli.

Transcript

[00:08:00] Crystal: Welcome to the Healthy Seas podcast, a show about what we need to do to have just that, healthy seas and a healthy future. I'm your host, Crystal DiMiceli, and in each episode, we talk about the problems facing the seas and oceans and the solutions we have to fix them. Come on in the water's fine

Today, I'm with Duncan Simpson, the North Coordinator for Ghost Diving UK and Andrew Jack, a fisherman from Burghead Scotland, and we're going to be talking about a huge undertaking that the two collaborated in to remove over 600 lobster pots lost at sea. Hi Duncan and Andy, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:53] Andy: Hi Crystal, thanks for having us. 

[00:00:55] Crystal: I recently took a trip to Scotland, and so I feel like I have an even greater context as to what we'll be talking about today and an appreciation for what you did. To give the listener some context, can you tell us what happened this past winter? 

[00:01:11] Andy: Okay, so, we were fishing for lobsters and crabs, mainly lobsters at this time of year. It was in the build-up to the, on the run, up to the Christmas market, which means prices are the highest they are all year, although there are not very many lobsters in the cove, so we had over six hundred pots in the water. We seen the forecast that there was gonna be a bad gale of wind coming in, Storm Arwen. So we spread out and then sort of hoped for the best. But we never foreseen just exactly how bad this storm was gonna be and the damage that was caused by it.

So even with the gear all spread out, it basically bunched up like a bunch of grapes. We weren't able to recover with the boat. We only manage to get maybe 50 to 80 up with the boat. And then we realized that we weren't gonna be able to recover this gear without the help of Ghostdiving UK. 

[00:02:02] Crystal: So tell me a little bit more about this storm. Why was it different than what you usually experience? 

[00:02:08] Andy: We've been fishing through storms before also. We've not been out in the boat during the storms but the fishing gears left at sea. Sometimes you get some damage that the creels double back on themselves, but we were able to haul that up on the boat, clear that issues and then shoot them out again. This Storm Arwen it was gusting over 90 mile an hour here. It's the worst I can ever remember. Worst storm I can ever remember. Some of the gear actually moved four, five miles from where it was set. So it was just a really, really powerful force. And there was not really anything we could have done differently to avoid that other than taking in all the fishing gear, but to take in 600 odd pots, would've took us probably a couple of weeks, two, three weeks before that. So we didn't have the luxury of that forecast previously. 

Yeah. And like I mentioned, I was in Scotland last week. What I saw when I was, there were hundreds and hundreds of downed trees and huge patches of ecosystems that were impacted. And that was only on the land. Like, what you're saying is that even in the ocean, even in the waters, there were huge impacts from the storm.

Massive. Yeah. I remember one of the nights that Storm Arwen was happening, there was roads all around here that was closed. I was actually planning on gettin over to Burghead just to check on the boats. I managed to get between Hopeman and Burghead, easy enough. But the road from Burghead up to Elgin was actually closed, which is just a town, maybe seven miles from Burghead.

All the trees in the road has been blown over. And now that road was actually blocked off. There was a lot of trees, damages to roofs, to cars, properties. There was a lot of stuff damaged between a bit this area. And then obviously we had damage to the, to the fishing gear. 

[00:03:57] Crystal: I think you said that it was 90 mile an hour winds, is that correct?

Because if that's the case, I mean, that's hurricane force winds. 

[00:04:04] Andy: Yeah. I think it was gusting over 90 miles an hour. I'd need to check online, but I'm pretty sure it was gusting over 90 emails an hour in some parts. 

[00:04:12] Crystal: And that's not common. 

[00:04:14] Andy: No, that's not common for around here. No. 

[00:04:16] Crystal: Oh, wow. Okay. And so. You said you spread out your gear. And that usually is what works with storms, but they all just bunched up and floated far away, which is, is crazy. I mean, I wanna ask you how you even find them to begin with, but before you even consider finding them going through their trouble of finding them, wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy new ones? Like why, why retrieve those? 

[00:04:45] Andy: Yeah, I suppose you could have, you could have done that. It was a lot of, it was a lot of money to lose. Um, not only that, a lot of that gear was tangled up on fishing grounds, not only where we work, there's maybe another six or eight boats work there. So if I just left that gear, it would affect a lot of people.

They wouldn't have been able to fish there. Or if they did try and fish there, possibly their gear would get caught up in it. And it was really just beneficial and not to mention also the ghost fishing that's involved in that lost gear. We didn't know the kinda sort of condition the gear was gonna be in. Was it still gonna be actively fishing or what was happening with it. 

[00:05:21] Crystal: Had you worked with Ghost Diving before? Did you know about them? 

[00:05:25] Andy: No, hadn't worked with ghost diving before, but I was aware of them and follow them on their social medias. So it was actually eh, I had a look through their social medias and was kinda trying to guess whether they'd be able to, to do something like this. I I'd seen them recover some pots before, but I don't think they've undertaken something on this scale before.

So, it was actually my dad that made the call and think he spoke to Duncan himself and he was up for giving it a go, eh. 

[00:05:47] Crystal: And Duncan. When you received the call, what were your first thoughts? I mean, have you undertaken a retrieval this large before? 

[00:05:56] Duncan: I was actually in Greece with the Ghost Diving Global Team team lifting nets and I received a call from Andy's dad, Graeme, and it wasn't, it wasn't a very good line. And I know, and he was talking about the number that they'd lost and I was a bit taken back, you know, I was kind of thinking our normal, sort of operations, I would find discarded fishing gear, and we lift it, you know, and we occasionally get reports of like five or 10 pots that are missing, like a line. So, we heard it was over 500, 600 pots, I was, at first, I kind of didn't really think it was something we could cope with on my own. Didn't think we were really set for that, you know. So, what was said was we'd come up and have a look and see if we could help. And we'd just basically just come up and meet the guys and find out what the conditions are like and see how deep it was. See how, what sort of boats we get access to. What the conditions were like. So we just agreed to have a look over the phone. 

[00:06:52] Crystal: And what are the conditions like in that area? 

[00:06:55] Andy: Yeah. I mean, it was winter it was winter time when Duncan came up. I think his first dive he'd done was in December so, eh, I think that he'll maybe tell you a bit more about the diving conditions. But it was winter months that they came up and most of the diving was a surprise to us. It was really surprising the conditions they manage to work in. We just can't thank them enough for, for coming up. 

[00:07:16] Duncan: So we went for a look in, obviously it's December in the UK, the water temperature is probably about six, seven degrees. So that's like a factor. It wasn't, it wasn't too deep.

We're probably talking 10 to 15 meters and it was variable basically. I mean, we went up about six times and on one of the dives. You're talking like zero visibility because it's, it's in tight with the shore and there's a lot of swell. So there's a lot of silt and sand getting kicked up, but you can barely see anything.

But then on other dives that the visibility was really good. So over the, over the space from probably December, June, that we went up there on six different occasions where we experienced quite few different conditions, you know, and it's, it's generally cold water. Not too deep. You can get bits of swell and there's bits of current, you know, I mean, obviously in December in Scotland, it's cold.

[00:08:05] Crystal: Yeah. I mean, I can't, I can't even comprehend going into water that cold. Also with cold outside temperatures. Like that, to me, is just beyond comprehension. I'm I'm not a cold water in person. I'm kind of a wuss in that regard, but that's, that's impressive. So how do you, how do you even locate where the pots are?

I mean, you have a vast sea in front of you. Like where do you begin? It's a needle in a haystack. 

[00:08:36] Andy: None of the pots really stayed where they were set. Several days, probably weeks, that we over the cliffs and looking out with binoculars, trying to, trying to spot some marker buoys. Went out in the boat, just scout an area back and forth trying to locate these buoys.

There was a few that was actually washed right ashore into the rocks. So, we needed to retrieve them and dispose of the gear. And then there were some marker buoys we found that were from different sets of pots but they were wrapped tight together. So on the end of that bunch, we knew there was, there was at least maybe 50 from different sets of gear.

[00:09:11] Crystal: And, so, the buoys were then able to remain afloat?

[00:09:14] Andy: Yeah, that was really beneficial. I mean, that was, that was one saving grace of the whole thing. We were actually really lucky in that regards, but the, the buoys stayed on. So we were actually able to locate at gear in different areas. 

[00:09:26] Crystal: Duncan, you had mentioned that you didn't think it would be possible to retrieve all these pots.

What made it possible? 

[00:09:33] Duncan: Well, some of our challenges are we need a dive boat and we didn't think there was a dive boat in the area. And I thought that would be a challenge because normally dive skippers are used to diving operations and they know procedures, et cetera. So I thought that was gonna hinder it.

And obviously the, the pure number of the pots that were missing, that's like it's could be weeks, days worth of work. You know, obviously we all volunteers as well, and the Moray Firth is a long way away from where I live personally and most other volunteers. The guys, the rest of the guys from Ghost Diving UK, it's like, it's like six hours away driving. So it's a long way away. And it's a remote area and there isn't really any dive charters, but ironically, I think that's what made it possible is the fact if we decided to dive off the lobster boat, is it possible physically dive of a boat that's designed for picking up lobster pots?

You know, it's not designed for diving. There's no dive lift. It's not set up for that. Ironically, it it's perfect for this task because once you've figured out a way to get on and off it safely, and you've got the people on the boat with the local knowledge of the area who know where the pots are, who know the currents and know the weather, they know the tides and know any dangers in the area.

Like whether the winds blowing in a dangerous direction towards a reef, once you've worked that out. And they've also got a one-ton hauler on the boat as well. So in some cases, you know, once we get one end of the, of the discarded pots lifted up, they can actually start hauling pots in and pulling rope in. So I think without using that, it wouldn't have been physically possible for a team of divers to actually do that. You know, you need to have the divers working with a fisherman. Using the boat that's designed to bring the kit on together. You know, I think it was like the collaboration that made this possible. If divers had just turned up and said, we're gonna take these out. It just wouldn't have happened. Had to, it had to be two teams working together with the, with the lobster boat. For me, that's what made it possible.

[00:11:34] Crystal: Oh, so cool. And you had said it was over the time period of like December to June or something? 

[00:11:40] Duncan: Yeah, I mean, we made six trips, I think. I counted six, seven. One we got blown out and we just, you know we just stayed in the local area. We couldn't dive. It was obviously November, December, January, February, March, April, May.. In the UK, the weather is volatile.

You know, you have to have, you have to have a lot of things aligned to make this happen. You have to have good weather. You have to have the volunteers have to have time off. Andy and Graeme have to be free so you use their boats. You know, lots of things have to come together. And I think we've got lucky basically.

So we've got a lot of decent weather, you know. Which allowed were to sort of carry on, but I mean, some of the, some of the lifts were extremely problematic. So you were finding like clumps of a hundred pots mashed up together and then trying to lift at the surface. And then, like, Graeme and Andy and Brian, the fishermen would spend, we're talking hours and hours of cutting pots off on the surface and then hauling them in one by one in a hook.

I mean, that could take hours that that's almost harder than the diving part, you know. Other times, you know, you're swimming about underwater with rope, like hundreds of meters of ropes just spread all over the place. In those, in those cases, you actually cutting pots off under the water and sending them up where they're taken out on bags.

So there was lots of different scenarios and you and each lift was sort of deciding the best way to do it. But I think it worked in the end. It worked out really well. And I say using, like working with the lot of fishermen, worked out, made it possible, basically. Obviously we've got vested interest in getting the discarded gear outta the water.

And obviously they've got interest in getting their gear back as well. But even though we've got different reasons for doing it, it worked out great. So, yeah. It's good. 

[00:13:19] Crystal: That's great. And you mentioned a gentleman named Graeme. Andy, that's your father, is that correct? 

[00:13:26] Andy: Yeah, that's right. Uh, my dad was out a lot of dive for Duncan as well with Brian as well.

So at times I wasn't available. So he was out with another fisherman, a friend, Brian. He came out and helped us several times over the course of the, the dives. There was kinda three of us that were involved with Duncan, and the rest of the Ghost Diving team. But, as Duncan says they made six or seven trips up that several of those trips were two, three days at a time.

So, I really appreciate obviously Duncan taking the time off and coming up as well as everybody else you volunteered. I mean, everybody was a massive help. There was no complaints and everybody was willing to, to help. 

[00:14:04] Crystal: So, they're lobster pots they're designed to trap lobster or whatever else might get in them.

Duncan, what kind of animals were you finding when you were coming upon the pots that were inside of them? 

[00:14:19] Duncan: Yeah, I mean, well, what we tend to find with, um, discarded lobster pots that aren't being, you know, actively removed is that you find everything. You'll find little fish in there. You'll find two or three crabs.

You'll find two or three lobsters. You'll typically like attack each other and then something else will go in to eat what's been attacked. Sometimes they're just full, full of life. And obviously it just, it stays there never, it never comes out. 

[00:14:43] Crystal: So they essentially, I mean, if you don't take the out of the water, they essentially starve to death.

[00:14:48] Duncan: Well, they'll either starve to death or eat each other, you know, something else will go in to eat that. But yeah, effectively some of them are just trapped. They just they'll just die. You know, I think on one occasion with Chris, one of the guys, he pulled like a pregnant crab out of one of the pots, you know, which obviously these guys have quotas and regulations and stuff, what they can, what they can take.

It's designed to be sustainable and that pregnant crab went straight back in the water, you know, which is pretty satisfying. Obviously there's a lot of, if the stuff that's caught, which is not being monitored, is like below size, you know, and that's, that's returned to water, you know, otherwise it would just sit there and they would just carry on catching continuously until something was done.

Obviously this case nothing would be done. It would just be left to rot for like years and years and years, you know? And also like the Moray Firth is famous for dolphins. You can actually watch them from the shore, you know, and there's obviously seals about and stuff like that, which, you can find many cases online of seals being trapped, and even some cases, whales being trapped in discarded rope, that's just floating loose in the water.

That's obviously a hazard that way we're keen, as Ghost Diving, to remove. It can be dangerous, you know? 

[00:15:59] Crystal: Well, it's dangerous for the boats too. The motors can get caught up and you know, it's, it's just dangerous for everyone. 

[00:16:06] Duncan: Well, yeah, there's, I mean, there's a few times when, cause there's so much line in the water, there's a few times that the prop of our boat got trapped up in line. So you have to send like a diver down underneath the boat to cut all that out. Otherwise, you're stuck, you know. 

[00:16:21] Crystal: Did anything happen to you guys while you were doing this work? 

[00:16:25] Andy: Yeah. Just, eh, when we were, when were were recovering the gear there, the top of the water there, Duncan and the team were sending up sort of recovery bags and, uh,

[00:16:35] Crystal: They were sending up what? 

[00:16:36] Andy: they were sending up recovery bags. So there was like a, like a clump of rope where several different creels all hanging from it. So each creel is around about 15, 20 kilos hanging from this So, although the bags are floating on the surface of the water, they need to grab the rope and then tie off one, cut the rope, cut that free from the lump of rope, and then be able to haul that over the rail.

Obviously, there was so much rope in the boat that the creel sort of fell over the rail back in the water and the clump of rope went up around my leg and was pulling me towards the side of the boat, and Chris, a diver, he stepped in and just, he cut the rope and freed my leg. 

[00:17:14] Crystal: The rope wrapped around your leg and was pulling on you. 

[00:17:18] Andy: Yeah, that's right, yeah, just, uh, we don't usually have obviously that amount of rope on, on the boat. You'd never be standing on top of the rope when you're shooting away gear, but just for the circumstances, I was trying to haul these creels over the rail, but, um, yeah, the weight of the creels sort of fell back and wrapped around my leg and pull me towards the rail. Pull me towards the side of the boat. Yeah. 

[00:17:37] Crystal: Oh my gosh. That's that's really scary. Yeah. This is not easy work that you guys do. 

[00:17:43] Duncan: Yeah. I mean, we're trained, is it. I just say when we're diving, you know, it's like an underwater puzzle, really. You've got like hundreds of meter ropes spread out with pots. Sometimes clumped up.

Sometimes they're like in lines, you know, and the problem is if you fire one up, then you lose the line and you can't just surface, you have to like take bearers and things and work out how to get to the next obstruction. And we're trying to decide, you know, is it better to cut them off on the bottom and send them up, but you've only got an infinite amount of time and air on the bottom. Or is it better to take the whole lot as in big clumps and send it up and get them cut off on the surface?

Obviously, the problem is once they're on the surface, they're held up by bags and it's heavy, it can weigh, you know, some of these clumps are like 20, 30 pots held up by bags. And as soon as you take the bag away, it sinks, you know. And, there were some occasions where, you know, the gear was just sinking again because it was too heavy for the bags.

And at some point we had divers like underneath with a, the hook would come off the boat, a diver would swim underneath the gear and cut one pot off and then hook it onto a line that's and then they, the fishermen would then pull that one pot under the boat and you'd have to do that, like a pot at a time, you know, and you're talking like 50, 60 pots in some cases.

And obviously, if there's any swell on the boat or someone cuts the wrong rope, you can lose gear. And obviously, as Andy said, in some cases, you know, someone can get trapped in a rope or be under the pot when it goes down, you know? So. You gotta, you just gotta be careful when you're doing it, but that's where you try and work together.

And someone, one person on the water and one person on the boat. In some cases, this, this stuff's like it's in a line. But I think the, the actual, the power of this, this storm, which at one point Andy said to me, he said, oh, down there is kelp. And there'd be like a load of pots in the kelp. And we went down and it was just sand. There was just like two or three foot of sand. I think the whole line was just buried in sand. You know, it actually changed the bottom of the sea basically by just lumping tons and tons of sand over that area, which was previously kelp forest and now was effectively like sand underwater, you know.

[00:19:52] Crystal: Oh, wow. Oh, that's an even bigger ecological disaster than, than I originally thought. Oh my goodness. So, Andy, were all of your pots retrieved? 

[00:20:05] Andy: Yeah, Duncan and the team managed to get em all back, yeah. There was a lot of them that was damaged beyond repair, but we managed to get em back outta the water, got them retrieved. And then, yeah, we're actually just working, throwing away, fixing some of them. I had to buy, had to buy some replacement gear. So we're working with replacement gear just now and the winter project this year will be to just dispose of 

[00:20:23] Crystal: But still that that's a lot that you were able to retrieve.

Good luck with fixing them up this winter. So what's, what's next for you guys. What's next for you, Andy. And, and you Duncan. 

[00:20:37] Andy: Yeah, that's a plan for me. Just continue fishing just now. And then, once the winter sets in, probably before November, just because I'm not taking my chances again, I hope I never see a storm like Storm Arwen again but it'll just be a case of working in the store through the winter and going fishing the days we can, but the plan is it'll be just trying to get as much gear as much as we can ready for next year. 

[00:20:56] Crystal: And you, Duncan? 

[00:20:58] Duncan: Yeah, well, we just, we continue on with the mission. You know, we we're, you know, we're supported by Healthy Seas, Pascal, Ghost Diving, you know, in the Netherlands, he supports me, we're still getting reports in of ghost gear from fisherman. Even when we're, even while we're going to Burghead, we were still getting reports in from Exmouth.

So in between like the Burghead mission, we were like going down Exmouth and going out there and collecting pots and rope, uh, cuz they were obviously hit by Storm Arwen as well. You know I think someone, it was rumored that something like 750,000 pound worth of fishing gear are still lost in the North Sea as a result of that storm.

Cause it didn't only hit the Moray Firth. It hit all down the coast, you know, where I live, there's trees been flattened and woods been flattened on land. So yeah, we're still receiving reports. We're still actively getting out. Obviously we, we sort of drew a sort of line under the, the, the Burghead working with Andy, et cetera.

You know, we just continue doing what we're doing, retrieving ghost gear. And I know at the end of the retrieval, Andy actually took us out to dive. We had an email from someone saying there was discarded fishing nets on two shipwrecks in the Morey Firth. So Andy very kindly took us out and we did surveys on a big ship, big famous Scottish shipwreck.

And also like a famous Scottish submarine wreck. In there, and we found five or six nets on those. So we had a plan to go back and remove those. Cause obviously there, they caused a big problem, you know, dis discarded fishing nets. So, at the minute, we just we're planning to do that. And hopefully we can do that with, with the use of Andy has, very kindly offered with, use his boat, you know, and his expertise in the area to go back and do that.

And it would sort of be nice to have like, the rest of the, the ghost diving teams come from abroad, you know, and we could maybe have a big, big, big mission to lift those in the, in the Moray Firth, you know.

[00:22:52] Crystal: That would be great. I, I hope you're able to get as many of those nets and gear out. And Andy, thank you for offering to help. It's invaluable. According to what Duncan says, having your equipment and your boat makes all the difference. So, it's been wonderful chatting with you guys today. I love hearing about such a wonderful example of collaboration between fishers and environmental groups, like Ghost Diving and Healthy Seas.

Thank you for your diligence and hard work and good luck in the future. 

[00:23:29] Duncan: Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for having me on the podcast. I appreciate it. 

[00:23:33] Andy: Yeah. Thanks very much for having me as well, Crystal. Thank you very much. And I wish all the best, as well.

[00:23:44] Crystal: Thanks for diving into The Healthy Seas Podcast with me. I'm your host, Crystal DiMiceli. And I was just chatting with Duncan Simpson and Andy Jack. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe and review it on your favorite podcasting app. I'll catch you next time.

Healthy Seas is a nonprofit on a journey from waste to wear. Founded in 2013, the organization aims at reducing marine litter caused by lost fishing gear through cleanup, prevention, and education activities. The nets collected by Healthy Seas are subsequently reused and recycled and used by its partners for the creation of new products.