A Brief Look at Drift Netting

In 2008, Edgar Alacan founded Jets.com, a startup that has grown to have more than 50 employees with about $40 million in annual sales. When not working, Edgar Alacan likes to fish.

The Statista Research Department states that in 2020, about 55 million US citizens participated in fly-fishing, saltwater fishing, and freshwater fishing; that year produced the most significant number of people who participated in fishing in more than 10 years.

Fishers and anglers use several techniques to catch fish; one such is drift netting. It is the process of using a specific kind of gill net, or drift net, for fishing. Fishers suspend the extremely long unanchored net below the water surface, which moves with the currents and winds in the environment. As a result it produces a veil or curtain where fish get trapped.

Primarily, fishers employ drift netting to capture species such as swordfish and large pelagic fishes– tuna, sharks, giant rays, and billfish, to mention a few. The drift net consists of nylon; its size ranges between 26 to 49 feet, and it can reach up to 55 miles in length.

Since drift nets do not have a specific species focus (because of their length), unwanted species such as turtles, seabirds, and sharks become trapped, destroying the ecosystem. Consequently, the United Nations banned fishers from using drift nets spanning more than 1.553 miles or 1.5 kilometers in length in 1993; America supported the ban.