Divers find massive fishing net filled with decomposing sharks
A massive floating net filled with hundreds of decomposing sharks and other sea creatures was discovered by a group of divers who were swimming near the Cayman Islands. The eerie photos were posted on Instagram last year.
Dominick Martin-Mayes, a 27-year-old fisherman and diving instructor who witnessed the scene told the Independent, “At first we thought it was a log, but as we got closer we could see it was a net with floats. I jumped in the water first and was shocked at what I saw. It took my breath away — the first thing I saw was the juvenile oceanic whitetip [shark]. I got my buddy who was with me to grab a knife and jump in. We did what we could to free some of the trapped life but most of it was already dead.”
A post shared by Dominick Martin-mayes (@dmartinmayes) on Apr 16, 2018 at 4:30pm PDT
Unfortunately, the divers had to leave the area and had to cut their rescue efforts short because they were afraid that they could get trapped in the net themselves.
“The net’s sole purpose in life is to kill. You get your hand wrapped in it and you drown,” he said.
Luckily, fisherman Charles Ebanks later returned to the place where the net was initially found and was able to bring it out of the ocean.
Approximately 46% of the 79 thousand tons of ocean plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of fishing nets, according to the study published in March 2018 in Scientific Reports. The study also indicated that annual plastic consumption has reached over 320 million tonnes, with more plastic being produced in the last decade than ever before.
The National Journal estimates that about 20% of all the sea creatures who are caught in commercial fishing nets are “bycatch,” or unwanted animals.
As Truth Theory reported earlier this year, a large-scale effort to clean up the great pacific garbage patch is finally having some success.
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