In advance of the celebrated Copper River commercial salmon season opener on May 22, Nicole Baker of Net Your Problem will be back in Cordova from May 7-17, walking the docks to talk with harvesters about how to recycle their worn-out fishing gear.
“We’ll be letting people know about the options for recycling and what they need to do before they drop it off,” said Baker, who will be making her fifth visit to Cordova to encourage recycling of old fishing gear.
While addressing members of Cordova District Fishermen United (CDFU) and those on the docks, she will also be handing out boot bands made by Grundens, which can be slipped over rain gear pants and pulled over boots to keep water from getting into the boots. The boot bands serve the dual purpose of promoting Grundens fishing gear and reminding fishermen to recycle worn out gear for repurposing into other usable products.
Baker’s busy schedule also includes working with Nelly and Michael Hand of Drifters Fish – who are planning a marine debris cleanup event to gather up more old fishing gear for recycling – filming a movie with Ocean Cowgirl, harvesting spruce tips, and swimming in the reservoir. Her company’s first plastics collection date for gillnetters and seiners is at the Cordova baler on May 28-29.
Baker was a commercial fisheries observer from 2010-2015 around Dutch Harbor, Kodiak and Akutan, when she first observed large piles of groundfish nets piled up on shore on their way to landfills. She read an article on social media that commercial fishermen in the Netherlands were sending their worn-out nets to Denmark for recycling. That gave her the idea for recycling nets in United States and the start of Net Your Problem – where she continues to talk up recycling nationwide and beyond, to get others involved.
These days, Baker works with a number of people connected with the commercial fishing industry – from vessel owners and captains to net manufacturers, government agencies, and companies interested in repurposing these plastics into an array of useable products.
“I am still learning new things every day on how to do stuff,” she said.
On May 25, Baker and several employees will be heading from Alaska to Seattle to bale up plastics at their Ballard warehouse and send them off to be recycled. The company also has projects going on in Maine, Southern California and the Florida Keys, in in development in Indonesia.
Then from June 7-19, they are off to Bristol Bay for a fourth year of recycling in Naknek, an event Baker is optimistic about being the best one to date. There Baker’s dad, and two friends of employee Caity Townsend, will be baling gillnets 10 hours a day, she said.
It’s a period Baker refers to as “crunch time” to catch up on what was generated over the winter before more comes in after the season in late July.
“We can’t be there, but our friends from the Kachemak Gear Shed and Bulletproof Nets will be representing us and giving away our boot band swag,” she said.
Baker, meanwhile, is booked to speak in Nanaimo, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island on Aug. 13 to do a presentation about Net Your Problem to the Association of Pacific Ports – of which she is the newest member.
For questions regarding how to recycle used fishing gear with Net Your Problem, contact retired commercial seiner Aaron Pettingill at 907-301-2855.
Correction: The original version of this story misspelled Nelly Hand’s name.
