SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) – Volunteers with the Sarasota Bay Watch (SBW) are spending their Sunday on the water fishing for fishing line.
The teams are helping the weekend after the holiday with what SBW is calling the “Flocksgiving Monofilament Cleanup.” Together, they’re scouring 26 popular fishing sites around Lido Key to pull left behind fishing materials out of the water.
It’s an important way to keep birds and other mammals safe, Sarasota Bay Watch Executive Director Ronda Ryan explained. Plenty of fishing line is getting tangled under bridges and in mangroves where it becomes a trap.
Sometimes fisherman will accidentally catch a bird on their line and cut it thinking that’ll help the bird escape. Instead, what happens is that the bird will fly home with 100 feet of line in tow where it’ll get tangled in the habitat. That web could kill the bird and then many more just like it if the hazard isn’t pulled out.
“Well, that line is still there like a spider web and continues to catch other birds in there,” Ryan explained. “So, inadvertently the birds are bringing this home if you are cutting your line.”
Unfortunately, fishing tech is very durable, so if volunteers don’t snag it, it’ll stay for years.
Volunteers out on the water are also keeping an eye out for injured or dead birds caught in these types of traps.
By the end of the expedition, Ryan expects the volunteers to haul in roughly a football field’s worth of fishing line. All of it will be sorted, separated and counted so organizers can identify which of those sites are hot spots that may need monofilament container to dispense with used line.
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