Scores of wild animals were drowned in a giant fishing net dumped in a marine park.
It trapped and killed dozens of fish, seabirds, crabs, and lobsters
The birds are thought to have drowned after getting entangled as they dived for fish trapped in the huge, 1,300ft-long abandoned net.
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Volunteers spent five hours removing it from Plymouth Sound National Marine Park, Devon on Monday (21 Apr), as reported by Need To Know.
A spokesperson from charity Fathoms Free which led the effort said: “The net stretched across the sea floor for over 400m.
“And was snagged on rocks and kelp along its entire length which along with the tidal flow really tested the team’s skills, experience, and stamina.
“With a team of divers in the water and another team on the surface the progress was slow and steady.
“The passionate volunteers worked relentlessly for hours all afternoon and into the evening to safely recover the net and free the marine life that was still alive.
“Tangled in the net were dead birds, including shags and an oystercatcher.
“There were dozens of lobsters of all sizes, dozens of edible and spider crabs of all sizes, wrasse, cat sharks, bull huss and countless decomposing fish that were unidentifiable due to the condition they were in acting as bait to the other marine life in the area.
“Our hard-working volunteers freed dozens of animals from all species but many more were sadly not so lucky.”
“It was honestly one of the worst ones we’ve done in quite a long time,” added Luke Bullus of Fathoms Deep.
“The birds are quite hard-hitting because they would have drowned as they dived down to fish that they saw tangled in the net,” he said.
More than 500,000 tonnes of fishing gear is estimated to be lost or abandoned every year in the world’s seas and oceans according to a report by conservationists Global Ghost Gear Initiative in 2020.
Plymouth Sound is the UK’s first national marine park, a project which aims to engage the city’s residents and businesses with the marine environment.
