SEATTLE -- It's time for some fishing off Kitsap County's Point Jefferson.

And with the help of the crew on board the BetSea, we really did catch a lunker!

What's on the end of the line smells like wet rancid garbage, and looks even worse. Crews are removing the derelict fishing gear, under a grant by the Northwest Straits Commission.

"We've identified over 110 different species that we've found in the nets. Just a snapshot of what they are capturing over time in the water," said Ginny Broadhurst, spokesman for the commission.

Broadhurst says over the years, fisherman lost thousands of old gill nets and crab pots in the water and never went back to retrieve them. Now, those nets continue to catch -- and kill.

"So there he's all free, that's a male, red rock crab, a little bit weak, but he's in pretty good shape. I think he'll make it," said Broadhurst.

While environmental contractor Jeff June works to free the crabs that are alive and throw them back in the water, they communicate with the captain up in the boat and coordinate how they'll pull up the net. It's a very complicated process, considering one net can easily be longer than a football field.

KIRO 7 photographer Dave Rockwell puts on his scuba gear, armed with an underwater camera, to show how difficult their work really is. With visibility typically very low in Puget Sound waters, the divers are often just feeling their way around the rocks.

Once they find the net, they try and hook a line to it, so the captain can start pulling it out.

And while these nets catch their fair share of crabs and fish, they also snare thousands of unsuspecting birds that just dove into the water head-first looking for a meal, never to surface again. Divers collect the bird bones from the net or from the bottom of the sea floor. The bones will then be sent off to a lab to be analyzed and identified.

Puget Sound Partnership estimates that the total number of marine birds has decreased 47 percent the past 20 years. And as intricately woven as the old gill nets are, so is the ecology of Puget Sound.

All the native species suffer including sea lions, harbor seals, Orcas, and other whales like the rare local "Minke" we captured on camera near Friday Harbor.

After about four hours, the crew was able to get five fishing nets, and they estimate there are 4,000 such nets all around Puget Sound.

More of the nets could be removed if the group could snag more money.

The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission also does similar gear and crab pot removal around the Puget Sound.

Currently, the Stillaguamish are conducting a study of how many crabs are killed in derelict pots each year and will share their results with the State department of Fish and Wildlife.

We'll take a closer look at the funding fight between organizations that all want to save Puget Sound in Chris Egert's next report.