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SmartPot

Ghost Gear

Ghost gear — lost or abandoned fishing equipment that continues to catch and kill marine life — is one of the most persistent forms of ocean pollution.

The Scale

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An estimated 10–30% of crab and lobster pots are lost every season. Causes include:

  • Storm damage: Heavy weather drags pots, tangles lines, snaps buoy connections
  • Prop cuts: Boat propellers sever buoy lines
  • Current drag: Strong currents move pots beyond their line reach, submerging buoys
  • Gear conflicts: Overlapping pot strings tangle with each other
  • Vandalism/theft: Buoy lines cut intentionally

Once the buoy is gone, there’s no way to locate the pot on the bottom.

The Damage

Section titled “The Damage”

A lost crab pot doesn’t stop working. The funneled entries continue to attract and trap crabs, finfish, and other organisms. Animals enter, can’t escape, die, and their decomposition attracts more animals. This cycle — called “ghost fishing” — continues for years until the pot eventually corrodes enough to collapse.

Studies have shown a single ghost pot can kill dozens to hundreds of organisms per year. Multiply by the thousands of pots lost annually in a single fishery, and the cumulative mortality is staggering.

Ghost gear also damages sensitive bottom habitat — seagrass beds, coral, rocky reef — as pots are dragged by current and storm action.

Prevention with SmartPot

Section titled “Prevention with SmartPot”

SmartPot addresses ghost gear at every stage:

Detection

Section titled “Detection”
  • The smart buoy logs GPS position with every telemetry packet
  • Drift alerts trigger when a pot moves more than 50 meters from its deployment point
  • The base station shows the last known position of every pot in the fleet

Location

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  • Even if the buoy is damaged or submerged, its last reported GPS position is stored on the base station
  • Future: acoustic pinger on the submerged unit for diver-assisted recovery

Recovery

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  • Ropeless recovery means the pot can be commanded to surface without a buoy line
  • If the buoy is damaged, the pot can still be located by its last GPS fix and recovered by dragging or diving

Failsafe

Section titled “Failsafe”
  • The servo door defaults to unlocked on power loss
  • If the buoy battery dies completely, the submerged unit loses power and the door opens
  • Trapped animals can escape rather than dying in an unpowered pot