Watermen Pull 24,000 Ghost Traps from Chesapeake Bay

Imagine being trapped in an underwater cage with no way out, waiting for a rescue that might never come. That's the reality for thousands of crabs, fish, and other creatures caught in abandoned fishing gear littering the Chesapeake Bay.

Over the past two years, Virginia's TRAP program has pulled more than 24,000 of these "ghost traps" from the water. The haul weighed 600,000 pounds and freed nearly 36,000 trapped animals.

The Chesapeake Bay stretches 200 miles from Maryland to Virginia and supplies one-third of America's blue crabs. But those same productive waters are haunted by thousands of forgotten crab pots that keep killing long after their owners abandon them.

"These crab pots are also known as ghost traps," environmental reporter Lauren Hines-Acosta explained. "Sometimes they're just lost or not checked anymore, and critters can still get in there and they can't escape. So they just die really for no reason."

The traps don't just kill wildlife. They disrupt habitats and create navigation hazards for boats working the bay.

Now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded $225,000 to keep the cleanup going. The money will fund two new projects targeting Herring Bay and Eastern Bay, with local watermen leading the charge.

That makes perfect sense. Who better to find abandoned traps than the fishermen who work these waters every day?

Two organizations, Oyster Recovery Partnership and Raunch Inc., will partner with these local experts. The watermen know exactly what ghost traps look like and where they're most likely to lurk beneath the surface.

This isn't Virginia's first cleanup rodeo. From 2008 to 2014, similar efforts removed roughly 34,000 ghost traps. That success made Virginia's marine science institute the nationwide leader in ghost trap removal.

The Ripple Effect

The impact reaches far beyond the Chesapeake. In Florida, Ocean Aid 360 has turned ghost trap removal into a competitive sport with annual "ghost trap rodeos" where locals compete to collect the most marine debris in four hours.

Since 2019, these tournament-style events have attracted anglers, boaters, paddlers, and even shoreline walkers. Together, they've pulled nearly 150,000 pounds of trash from Gulf waters across 18 cleanup events.

The Virginia program alone has created more than 135 jobs, proving environmental cleanup and economic opportunity can go hand in hand. Every trap removed means healthier crab populations, safer navigation, and more wildlife swimming free.

One cleanup at a time, these watermen are giving trapped animals a second chance and giving the bay a fresh start.