1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive

POTFEST 2023 COMPETITION
THEME: NURSERY RHYMES

A counting rhyme dating from c.1765
Thrown and handbuilt porcelain with ghost fishing gear

My work is decorated with tools made from flotsam and jetsam that I find washed up on Scotland’s beaches. A large amount of what I discover is marine plastic or ‘ghost fishing gear’: ropes, nets, and other fishing waste that’s been lost or purposefully discarded at sea.

It is estimated that ghost gear makes up at least 10% of marine litter – some 500,000 to 1 million tonnes are dumped in the ocean every year. It is the deadliest form of marine plastic as it indiscriminately impacts wildlife – entanglement or ingestion slowly kills marine mammals (whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions etc), seabirds, sea turtles, and sharks.

You may find these figures alarming, but there are plans underway to develop and implement long-term prevention strategies. In the meantime when you visit the coast you could help by spending 10 minutes collecting any rubbish you find and disposing of it safely, or get involved with a local organised beach clean.

This series encouraged the viewer to count the numbers, read the hidden statistics, and find the ghosted species affected by increasing amounts of marine litter dumped in our seas.

Answers
Lost at sea every year:
Enough fishing line to circle the earth 18 times Seal
2% of commercial fishing gear Porpoise
14 billion longline hooks Ray
30,000 square miles of purse seine nets Gannet
25 million pots and traps Turtle