‘Ghost gear’: the Senegalese team battling a lethal fishing legacy – in pictures
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Fishing nets abandoned or lost in the sea – known as ‘ghost nets’ or ‘ghost gear’ – have been called ‘the most deadly form of marine plastic debris’. Dolphins, fish, whales, seabirds and turtles become entangled and die slow, painful deaths. But divers in Dakar are working to remove the threat
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Plastic and cotton nets recovered off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, by the local diving organisation and NGO Oceanium, which organises regular underwater net removals. On one recent outing, a tonne of abandoned nets was collected.
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Divers working for Oceanium prepare to remove ghost nets.
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A live fish trapped in a ghost net. The nets spend decades on the sea floor capturing and killing marine life and disrupting habitats until they disintegrate into microplastics and enter the food chain.
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The divers raise abandoned nets with dead fish caught inside. Some 650,000 tonnes of fishing gear is discarded or lost in the world’s oceans each year, about 46% of the Great Pacific garbage patch.
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A diver surfaces with a ghost net. ‘We try to carry out one operation per month or every two months,’ says Rodwan El Ali, Oceanium’s diving director. ‘On average we take out 30 to 40 tonnes per year. And for each operation you need more or less around 30 people.’
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A member of the clear-up team carries a ghost net.
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A view from underwater as volunteers on the boat pull the nets on to the deck.
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Fish caught in a ghost net.
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Volunteers check the nets for living fish and other marine organisms.
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A crab saved from a lost net.
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The Oceanium team bring retrieved waste back to the centre
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A dead sea bream in a ghost net
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A diver heads back down to retrieve more old nets.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
