GHOST GEAR PREVENTION THAT ACTUALLY SCALES

Ghost gear prevention that actually scales.
By Alastair Macleod, CEO, Ground Control

Lost fishing gear has long been treated as inevitable once it moves beyond coastal radio range. For skippers working offshore or in busy grounds, the moment gear is shot and the vessel moves on, visibility is lost. When gear later goes missing, crews are forced to make decisions based on assumptions rather than information.

That lack of connectivity has shaped how ghost gear is managed. Recovery has dominated the response not because it is the best option, but because it has often been the most practical option offshore. Prevention at scale has been limited by the simple fact that there was no reliable way to maintain a live data link with gear after deployment.

What is now changing is that constraint. Low-power satellite IoT makes it possible to keep fishing gear digitally visible at sea, even well beyond coastal coverage. In practice, it means the data link does not drop away once gear is shot and the vessel moves on.

Ghost gear is too often framed as a marine litter problem, something unsightly on the seabed or an unfortunate consequence of bad weather. That framing may be familiar, but it does not reflect the reality faced by working fishing vessels.

Lost gear hits the business long before it shows up as an environmental issue. It affects margins, disrupts fishing plans and adds risk in an industry already dealing with rising costs, tighter management and increasingly crowded grounds. The environmental impacts are real and serious, but they sit alongside very practical operational consequences.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear accounts for approximately ten percent of global marine litter, with rates of gear loss varying significantly by gear type and region. Location, target species and fishing method all influence rates of loss. Independent research has shown that abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear continues to capture animals long after it leaves the vessel, with well-documented impacts on stocks and non-target species. This ongoing ghost fishing effect has been documented in peer-reviewed scientific literature, including studies published in journals such as Marine Pollution Bulletin and Fisheries Research, as well as by organisations including Ghost Fishing UK.

For those working at sea, that figure is not abstract. It represents real financial loss and growing operational risk in an industry already under pressure.

The real cost of lost gear

The economics alone should focus minds. A single crab or lobster trap can represent £800 to £1,600 of investment once hardware, rigging and labour are accounted for, and losses rarely occur in isolation. When strings of gear are lost through weather, vessel interaction or seabed conditions, the financial impact can be severe. For smaller operators in particular, a single incident can remove much of a season’s margin.

But the cost does not end with the balance sheet. Lost gear continues to fish. Pots and nets do not simply sit idle once detached. They continue catching and killing marine life. The World Wildlife Fund has repeatedly highlighted that fishing gear accounts for a significant proportion of marine plastic pollution and is a major cause of entanglement of whales, turtles, seabirds and sharks.

This is not a marginal environmental concern. It is a persistent source of mortality and ecosystem damage. Peer-reviewed studies have demonstrated that lost pots and traps can retain measurable catchability for extended periods after loss, continuing to capture target and non-target species and contributing to ongoing stock mortality.

Why recovery alone will rarely be enough on its own offshore

For years, the industry response has focused on retrieval after the fact. Beach clean-ups, dive teams and volunteer recovery schemes play an important role, but they are fundamentally reactive. They rely on finding gear once it is already lost, often long after the damage has been done.

Clean-up programmes cannot keep pace with the rate of loss, particularly offshore or in high-traffic fishing grounds. Even well-funded initiatives struggle to locate gear once it has moved or been buried. By the time it is recovered, the environmental and economic damage has already occurred.

Prevention is becoming practical

That picture is now starting to change.

Low-power satellite IoT connectivity now allows fishing gear to remain digitally visible after deployment, even well beyond coastal radio range. It provides a low-data link that continues to work offshore, without reliance on shore stations or vessels being nearby.

In practical terms, this kind of connectivity allows crews to maintain visibility of gear behaviour after deployment. Continuous data on position, movement and depth makes it easier to identify when gear has been displaced, dragged or temporarily submerged, rather than permanently lost. That distinction matters. In many loss events, gear is not destroyed but simply out of position, and without information it is often written off too early.

Blue Ocean Gear is one company applying this approach in commercial fisheries, using satellite IoT connectivity provided by Ground Control to support gear monitoring at sea. The emphasis is not on automation, but on giving skippers information they have not previously had once gear leaves the vessel.

At its core, this is about extending situational awareness to equipment that has traditionally been out of sight and out of reach. The wider point is capability rather than brand. Satellite IoT removes one of the principal technical limitations that has historically constrained prevention at scale. Offshore grounds, remote fisheries and mixed fleets can all be covered using the same approach, making prevention feasible beyond coastal trials or short-term projects.

Why this matters now

From a management perspective, this shift is significant. Groups such as the Global Ghost Gear Initiative consistently emphasise that prevention must sit at the centre of effective solutions. Regulators and fisheries managers face increasing pressure to address ghost gear impacts, yet enforcement and clean-up alone will rarely be enough on their own offshore to keep pace with losses.

From an industry perspective, the logic is straightforward. If even a fraction of the gear currently lost each year can be recovered through better visibility, the economics quickly stack up. More importantly, it reduces uncertainty. Fishing is already a high-risk business. Reducing avoidable losses improves resilience.

Ghost gear will not be eliminated entirely. Weather, vessel traffic and complex seabeds will always play a role. But treating loss as unavoidable is increasingly out of step with the tools now available.

For an industry focused on efficiency, stock stewardship and reducing avoidable costs, prevention deserves as much attention as recovery.

 About the author

Alastair MacLeod is Chief Executive Officer of Ground Control, a UK- and US-based connectivity provider specialising in satellite and hybrid communications for remote, offshore and other hard-to-reach environments. With more than 25 years’ experience in global connectivity and machine-to-machine communications, he has led the development of low-power tracking and data systems used across sectors including maritime, energy, logistics, utilities and environmental monitoring, where reliable communications are required beyond terrestrial network coverage.

About Ground Control

Ground Control is a UK- and US-based company specialising in reliable, rugged satellite and hybrid IoT communications solutions for remote and mission-critical operations.

Founded nearly 30 years ago, the company has built a strong reputation for designing and manufacturing compact, low-power satellite IoT devices and two-way messaging trackers, used across industries where connectivity is essential, no matter how remote the location.

At the heart of Ground Control’s offering is Cloudloop, a flexible and secure device and subscription management platform that enables seamless provisioning, data routing, and operational visibility across diverse global asset fleets.

With teams based in the UK and California, Ground Control serves a broad range of sectors, including:

• Environmental science & monitoring
• Fisheries & marine operations
• Utilities & smart grid
• Renewable energy infrastructure
• Disaster response & early warning systems
• Agriculture & precision farming,
• Defence & humanitarian logistics.

Ground Control’s devices and platforms are used by governments, NGOs, research institutes, and industrial operators worldwide to enable data-driven decision-making, monitor assets in real time, and ensure business continuity in challenging environments.

Now part of the CLS Group, Ground Control continues to develop robust, field-proven technology while benefiting from the global reach, environmental mission, and scientific legacy of its new parent company.

www.groundcontrol.com

About CLS

CLS is a global company, mission-driven, and pioneer provider of monitoring and surveillance solutions for the Earth, created in 1986. It is a subsidiary of the French Space Agency (CNES) and CNP, an investment firm.

Its mission is to create innovative space-based solutions to understand and protect our planet and to manage its resources sustainably.

CLS employs 1100 people at its headquarters in Toulouse (France) and in 34 other sites around the world.

The company works in five strategic markets:

• Sustainable fisheries management
• Environmental monitoring
• Maritime surveillance
• Mobility
• Energies & infrastructures.

CLS processes data from almost 200,000 beacons per month (such as drifting buoys, animal tags, VMS beacons, and LRIT tracking) and observes the oceans and inland waters (every day more than 20 instruments onboard satellites deliver information to CLS on the world’s seas and oceans). In addition, CLS monitors land and sea activities by satellite (nearly 20,000 radar and optical images and several hundred drone flights are processed each year). The CLS Group had a revenue of nearly 193 million Euros in 2024.

Committed to a sustainable planet, every day the company works for Earth, from Space.

www.cls.fr

Image: Alastair Macleod, CEO, Ground Control