Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 681 is a conversation with Neill Holland, founder and captain of Ocean Aid 360, a Tampa Bay nonprofit that finds and retrieves derelict and abandoned 'ghost' traps and lost fishing gear from Florida waters. Through its Ghost Trap Rodeo tournament series, Ocean Aid 360 turns volunteer anglers into a cleanup fleet, pulling hundreds of traps in a single day. We talk about how he got started, why ghost gear is so destructive, and how the fishing community became the solution.
Listen now: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube · or press play in the player above.
Neill Holland is the founder and captain of Ocean Aid 360, a Tampa Bay-based marine conservation nonprofit, and he also runs a fishing charter company out of St. Petersburg, Florida. After repeatedly encountering lost crab and lobster traps on his charter grounds, he built an organization dedicated to finding and retrieving derelict and abandoned traps and other ghost fishing gear from Florida's waters.
Ocean Aid 360 is a nonprofit based in Tampa Bay that focuses on locating and removing derelict and abandoned traps and lost fishing gear, known as ghost gear, from Florida waters. It began its programming in 2018 with a pilot grant from NOAA's Marine Debris Program and now works alongside the FWC, NOAA, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to clean up hot spots selected by state biologists.
The Ghost Trap Rodeo is a tournament event series Ocean Aid 360 created, modeled on familiar inshore fishing tournaments like redfish tourneys. Volunteers bring their own vessels, family, and fishing buddies and spend roughly four hours during the closed season searching for derelict traps and marine debris and bringing it in. One event in May brought in 822 derelict and abandoned traps in a single day.
Lost and abandoned traps keep fishing indefinitely, trapping and killing marine life that can never be harvested. Neill describes pulling up a single derelict trap that held 26 adult spiny lobster, and another single trap holding 18, illustrating how thousands of commercially valuable spiny lobster, stone crab, and blue crab are lost to ghost gear that stays in the fishery.
While running his charter company out of St. Petersburg, Neill kept seeing ghost traps on the grass beds. The defining moment came when he had to jump into ten feet of water during tarpon season off St. Pete Beach, with customers aboard and a school of tarpon running the beach, to cut a stone crab trap out of his propeller. That experience set him on the path to founding Ocean Aid 360.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 681 with Neill Holland is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
Most conservation conversations stay abstract. Neill Holland's work is anything but. He runs a charter out of St. Petersburg, and he kept seeing the same thing I have seen on the water for years: lost crab and lobster traps littering the grass beds, still catching and killing fish that nobody will ever harvest. Instead of complaining about it, he built an organization that does something. What I love is that he did not fight the fishing community, he recruited it. Ocean Aid 360 turns anglers into a cleanup fleet, and the numbers he is putting up are staggering.
Press play in the player above to hear the whole story.
If you have ever wondered why a single lost trap is a big deal, Neill answers it with a number that stopped me cold. He describes pulling up one derelict trap that held 26 adult spiny lobster, and that was one of 822 traps brought in during a single event. A trap that stays in the water never stops fishing. He explains the scale of what is sitting on the bottom right now and why it keeps killing long after anyone has forgotten it. Listen to that part of the episode.
This is the genius of what Neill built. Rather than ask volunteers to do a chore, he launched the Ghost Trap Rodeo, an event series modeled on the inshore redfish tournaments we all know. Boats compete during the closed season to haul in the most derelict traps and marine debris, family and fishing buddies aboard, four hours on the water. He walks through how the model came together and why making it fun is what makes it work. Hear him explain it in the player above.
Neill's origin story is the kind of thing only a working captain would have. He talks about having to jump into ten feet of water during tarpon season, customers on board, a school of tarpon running the beach, to cut a stone crab trap out of his propeller. That moment, and the realization that there were no other traps anywhere nearby, set him on the path. He tells it better than I can summarize it. Listen to that stretch of the conversation.
Ocean Aid 360 started in 2018 with a twelve-month pilot grant from NOAA's Marine Debris Program and seven events around Tampa Bay. Neill explains how that first year collected nearly 30,000 pounds of traps and plastics, and how the organization now collaborates with the FWC, NOAA, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to travel to hot spots across the state. The growth story is a blueprint for anyone trying to build a conservation mission that actually scales. Press play in the player above.
Listen to the full conversation: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · or watch in the player at the top of this page.
What stays with me about Neill is that he found a way to make conservation feel like fishing. Nobody is being lectured. People are out on the water with their families, competing, and at the end of the day they have pulled hundreds of death traps off the bottom.
The fishing community gets painted as the problem in a lot of these debates. Neill's model proves we can be the solution, and that the people who know the water best are the ones most capable of cleaning it up.
Press play in the player above, or grab Episode 681 on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Neill Holland · Ocean Aid 360 · Ghost Trap Rodeo · NOAA Marine Debris Program · FWC (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · Tampa Bay · St. Petersburg, Florida
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Neill Holland is the founder and captain of Ocean Aid 360, a Tampa Bay-based marine conservation nonprofit dedicated to retrieving derelict and abandoned traps and lost fishing gear from Florida waters. A working charter captain out of St. Petersburg, he launched Ocean Aid 360 in 2018 with a pilot grant from NOAA's Marine Debris Program and created the Ghost Trap Rodeo tournament series, which mobilizes volunteer anglers to remove ghost gear during closed seasons. Ocean Aid 360 collaborates with the FWC, NOAA, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to clean up debris hot spots across the state, and has removed hundreds of traps and tens of thousands of pounds of marine debris.
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