By the end of an orientation dive on our donor site we came across a fishing net at the reef. The 20 meter long net seemed to be abandoned by fishermen when it got entangled and stuck in the coral. It was overgrown with algae and feather stars and snails were crowding the ropes. We decided to come back and take it out with floaters the next week, but then the weather conditions changed and we failed to locate it again. A few months later, in December, our project manager Bart suddenly bumped into the net again. He went up to mark the location by GPS and returned the week after with our Reef Ranger Cathrine to free the reef from the net. Since ghost nets harm the corals and marine life can get entangled they need to be taken out to protect the reef. Our buddy team attached a series of small floaters to the top of the net and managed to unentangle it from the corals. Spider shells that got trapped were carefully released before they let the ~40 kg net with 5kg of lead up to the surface. We're thankful for this great donation since we needed more weights for guests who are diving with us. Also the ghost net will used to display 'entangled marine life' in our education center to create awareness among our visitors.
If you're interested to see our education center for yourself, please come and visit us in Diani!
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