I don't know much about fishing nets, but cotton seems plentiful, is biodegradable, and there are plenty of poor cotton farmers in need of increased demand for their product.

If someone knows what fishing nets were made of before they were made of plastic, please chime in.

They must have been made out of natural fibers originally, but I would imagine a big problem with that would be that they would absorb water and become very heavy.

Cotton also absorbs water.

Most of the problem is that a billion pounds of fishing nets are left in the ocean every year, harming wildlife.

Cotton requires a lot of water to grow and process.

Hemp was the original material for fishing rope and nets :)