Navarre Beach Sea Turtle Conservation Center along with UF/IFAS Santa Rosa County Florida Sea Grant Extension Office is contributing to a statewide project dedicated to reducing the environmental damage caused by discarded fishing line.
Today the old recycling bin designs have a new look. By wrapping four bins with Aquaman, sea turtle hatchlings and underwater themes, along with a square opening on top for the fishing line, the NBSTCC hopes to encourage and increase fishing line recycling.
An NBSTCC-trained volunteer will collect and separate the leads, hooks and sinkers from the fishing line and send the line to a recycling company. That line is melted into raw plastic pellets that can be made into other plastic products like tackle boxes, spools for line and toys.
By placing these redesigned bins on the Navarre Pier, we hope to encourage all anglers to deposit their excess line into these bins. The new design should also help keep trash out of the bins.
Discarded fishing line that ends up in the ocean that can cause entanglements with marine wildlife. Sweet Pea, the NBSTCC’s nonreleasable green sea turtle and ambassador-in-residence, survived fishing line entanglement. Her right front flipper had to be amputated, her digestive system is damaged from ingesting fishing line and hooks, and she was struck by a boat because she was not able to swim due to the entanglement. Her injuries were so severe that she was not able to be released back into the wild.
Chris Verlinde from the UF/IFAS Santa Rosa County Florida Sea Grant Extension Office stated, “When you think of the properties of fishing line, it is strong, invisible and lasts a very long time. Imagine in the environment the detrimental it has on animals, boats, and even humans can be entangled in fishing line. Collectively, by using the fishing line recycling bins on the pier and other boat ramp locations we can have less impaction wildlife, humans, boat engines, gear, and equipment.”
