http://www.diveheart.org/

Derelict fishing gear and its related problems

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

cascas

Contributor
Scuba Instructor
Messages
251
Reaction score
66
Location
Netherlands
# of dives
1000 - 2499
Most divers I'm sure have encountered items like fishing lines or even (parts of) nets under water. These items cause waht is known as Ghost Fishing, meaning that that fishing gear wil continue to hoop, trap en eventually kill aquatic life.
Among the animals that get in trouble are all sorts of fish, turtles, mammals like seals, sea lions, sea otters, dolphins, whales but also birds. These animals die because the fishing gear was lost or discarded. The Ghost Fishing foundation strives to motivate teams to organize cleanup activities while also organizing projects to do cleanups.
At the moment we have teams all over the world working on projects of various sizes. In LA the Los Angeles Underwater Explorers are close to finishing the cleanup or the wreck of the Infidel, in Croatia the MS Argo was cleaned up by a team of European divers including Dutch, Italian, Croatian, British and Polish divers. In Wellington, New Zealand a team is working on their local divesite, Belgium recently formed their own team Ecoduikers focussing on the Belgian part of the North Sea.
The first contacts have been made to get a project started in the Boston area on the US East Coast.

All these activities require a lot of support either physically of financially. Clearing up nets involves team work, using knives in bad visibility, and hard work so most participating divers are well trained, most of them technical wreck (full trimix) or (full) cave trained.

For more information on our work including photos and videos, please visit
www.ghostfishing.org
www.facebook.com/ghostfishing (don't forget to like if you do :) )

Donations are necessary and appreciated
 
Last edited:
Kudos to you for this. We have some groups here in southern California that focus on removing ghost fishing gear. LAUE and Hollywoodivers are removing nets from the wreck of a squid seiner (the Infidel) at a depth of 150 fsw. Ocean Defenders Alliance also does such projects. Too bad the vessels that leave this gear can't be charged for the cleanup!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom