> Lost and abandoned fishing gear which is deadly to marine life makes up the majority of large plastic pollution in the oceans
This is one of those statistics that shouldn't even pass the sniff test. Think about all of the millions of ways that humans use plastic across every single industry, job, and area of life. And yet somehow ghost gear is supposed to be greater than all of that put together?! Are fisheries just dumping a hundred nets in the ocean for every one they use or something? The number makes no sense.
And, indeed, the report in question says no such thing. What it does say is:
"12 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean every year" and "640,000 tonnes of ghost gear enters the ocean every year". So that means ghost gear is only around 5% of the plastic that ends up in the ocean per year. In fact the report itself states that "Ghost gear is estimated to make up 10% of the plastic waste in our oceans".
Of course, that's not alarming enough, so it also goes on to state that "[ghost gear] represents a much higher proportion of large plastics found floating at the surface" and "over 85% of the rubbish on the seafloor on seamounts and ocean ridges, and in the Great Pacific Gyre."
That sounds bad but... it should come as no surprise. Most plastic that ends up in the ocean is trash. Land-based trash plastic that is large or heavy enough to sink is less likely to flow down rivers and end up in the middle of the ocean. It will get broken up by trash processing, sink to the bottom of rivers, or otherwise not make it all the way to the ocean intact. So of course you'll see a disproportionate amount of ghost gear when you look on the seafloor or at large items—ghost gear is large plastic that is deliberately designed to sink in seawater and then is deliberately dragged out into the middle of the ocean and thrown overboard.
If your primary goal is to save animals, then Greenpeace's focus on ghost gear makes sense. But if your goal is to reduce the overall amount of plastic ending up in the ocean (which also saves animals), then ghost gear is only a relatively small fraction of the problem.