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JAMES ELTON, REPORTER: These should be some of the most pristine beaches in the world - the rugged coast of southeast Arnhem Land in the Gulf of Carpentaria.JOANNE POMERY, SENIOR RANGER: The shop’s very expensive.
It’s like triple the price as it is in town and the best thing is to stick on country food - you know. Go out fishing, there’s a lot of fish they get along there – stingray, shark, turtles, dugong - that’s all our tucker we eat, you know.Volunteers from conservation group Sea Shepherd have joined the local Indigenous rangers on a major cleanup of this section of coastline just to the south of Blue Mud Bay.RANGER: They belong in the mangroves. JAMES ELTON: Ghost nets are discarded fishing nets that often drift for years to make it to Australian shores. GRAHAME LLOYD, SEA SHEPHERD: Once they’re at sea, they then continue to float through the ocean making a wall of death if you think about it because everything that is caught in those nets then dies.KRISTEN SIERKE, RANGER: Ghost nets are horrible. I don’t think anyone that’s had to deal with them would say otherwise. They are often buried; they can be wrapped around dead tree branches and then buried as well. Sometimes they can be massive. JAMES ELTON: Clive Nunggarrgalu, a senior cultural leader in his community, worries about kids playing on beaches strewn with fishing equipment. CLIVE NUNGGARRGALU, SENIOR RANGER: Our kids they like to out hunting with spears, fishing line, they running with no shoes on. They might get hurt in the feet or somewhere, no. JAMES ELTON: In a single day, the team removed two tonnes of nets and other rubbish from a single section of this one beach. The nets that reach these beaches have been pulled in on ocean currents. From the semi-enclosed and relatively shallow Arafura and Timor Seas which Australia shares with its nearest neighbours. KAREN EDYVANE, FISHERIES EXPERT: Indonesia is the second biggest fishing nation on earth. The major consideration in the Gulf of Carpentaria is just the sheer number of Indonesian fishermen and illegal fishers in the Arafura Sea in particular.Many of the nets trace back to countries with low reported catch suggesting illegal and unregulated fishing is happening at scale. KAREN EDYVANE: Over 95 percent of the foreign fishing nets that wash ashore come from just four countries - Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and Korea. What we’re seeing is countries that are fishing in Indonesian waters which are not reporting their catch to the Indonesian authorities. JAMES ELTON: Last year, the federal government announced it would spend $1.4 million working with Indonesia and PNG to figure out how to stop ghost nets at their source.KAREN EDYVANE: We need in country presence. If you are serious about working together we need to have people in country, in Indonesia, in Timor Leste, in Papua New Guinea, working side by side with their fisheries counterparts. JAMES ELTON: Back on the beaches in the Gulf, it’s another pool of funding that’s got ranger groups concerned. The $15-million Ghost Net Initiative subsidised the cost of these remote beach cleanups over the last four years. GRAHAME LLOYD: If the federal government don't renew the funding for the ghost net program, then basically it is going to be the end for a lot of the resources and the tools that the rangers – they’ll no longer be able to fund themselves to come out on these cleanups. CLIVE NUNGGARRGALU: We don’t worry about money much but if you get this message, you government people, we need to protect our country and keep our country really strong so we want to get support from you guys you know and keep the ranger groups working and keep us strong. JAMES ELTON: In a statement, a spokesperson for the Albanese Government told 7.30 the money is due to expire in December this year but longer-term funding is being considered. Turtles, which are among the animals most vulnerable to the nets, have been seen returning to beaches following cleanups for nesting season. JOANNE POMERY: Another place around the corner, there’s a lot of turtles that go up. But when there was rubbish, not so much because they don’t know where to put their eggs. So much rubbish. CLIVE NUNGGARRGALU: It’s really good for us to keep continue and keep all the rubbish way from our good spot up here. Even for myself, when I see the beach clean, I don’t worry about the kids now – they can play and enjoy their life on the beach here along the sand – so really good for me when I see the beach nice and clean, make me proud. ‘Ghost Nets’ are nets and other fishing gear dropped into seas in Australia's north which are posing a serious environment hazard. Bearing the brunt are remote Aboriginal people who rely on the sea for food, and whose country is being polluted. Now, a federal funding gap threatens to derail their efforts to keep their beaches clean. James Elton reports.
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