"Ghost net" is the term given to fishing nets that have been abandoned at sea and left to float with the currents or tangle around anything in their way. Marine creatures from crabs to whales can become entangled in these mobile death traps, leading to the loss of millions of lives worldwide. Between 2002 and 2010, in Washington state alone, 870 ghost nets were removed from the water, with over 32,000 marine creatures trapped inside.
Gill nets are particularly nasty, as they form vertical walls, of sometimes hundreds of square meters, suspended from a line of floats along the top side. These catch anything too big to fit through the net holes, until eventually they are so weighted down by dead fish and mammals that they sink. Once on the ocean floor, the carcasses are consumed by other marine creatures, until the net is light enough to float again, which it does, and the cycle begins anew. Because most fishing gear is made from plastic which does not biodegrade , these nets have the potential to continue in this way for years. Depleting our oceans of millions of tons of fish stocks and degrading an ecosystem that around 3 billion humans globally depend on as a primary source of income or protein.
The National Institute of Fisheries Science in Korea has developed a biodegradeable material that can be used to make gill nets, as an alternative to nylon. While not the perfect solution, because nets made from this material still take 2 years of constant submersion to biodegrade, this is a step in the right direction.
These divers have found a nylon fishing net tangled around corals growing off the island of Pom Pom in East Malaysia. determined to remove the net before it does any more damage, they are working in pairs to cut it into manageable pieces and slowly unpick it from the coral reef, before lifting it to the surface for disposal.