F
red Nunn recalls a dive in the Firth of Clyde last December. ‘It was so eerie,’ he says. ‘The water was tea-brown and silty, and we were descending into this strange, murky world – amid
a massive, jumbled mess of ropes and pots. We knew they’d be there, but a dive like that is always tense: you’re assessing the situation, you’re wary of becoming entangled yourself.’ With more than 1,000 dives under his belt,
300 of which have been spent recovering lost fishing nets, Fred is a highly experienced diver – but even he was daunted by the scene. A storage barge had tipped during a storm, spilling all of its pots and ropes into the water. ‘We found the first pot at five metres,’ recalls Fred, ‘then more and more as we descended. We hit a giant pile at 14 metres: a monster tangle of ropes and pots. We tried to count them but it was too overwhelming, so we surfaced and started planning how we’d clean it all up.’ While most scuba divers seek out crystal-clear
waters, the volunteers at Ghost Fishing UK are made of sterner stuff. They don drysuits and breadknife-sized blades, braving hostile conditions in UK waters to remove and recycle Abandoned, Lost, or otherwise Discarded Fishing Gear (ALDFG), also called ghost gear.
Retrieving rubbish ‘We get tip-offs from divers, fishermen and
the boating community via our website,’ says Fred. After doing a survey dive, the volunteers plan how to recover the gear before descending again – often needing to cut it loose by hand, especially if it’s caught on a wreck. Items are floated to the surface using inflatable ‘lift bags’ and retrieved by the boat team. The equipment might have been lost
overboard, dislodged in a storm or snagged on other boats’ nets and towed away. But it doesn’t mean it stops working. Whether nets, lines or creels to trap fish and crustaceans, the ghost gear still catches, and kills, when it’s unmanaged. ‘Take gill nets,’ says Dr Phoebe Hudson,
an oceanography PhD student and one of Ghost Fishing UK’s volunteer divers. ‘They’re walls of netting, 150 to 300 metres long, designed
“Nets trap fish, which bring in scavengers that also get caught”
rya.org.uk SUMMER 2025 47
Photo: Phoebe Hudson
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