Katie Wood
Freediver, Writer, Explorer
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Katie Wood
Freediver, Writer, Explorer
Ghost nets. The phrase itself feels unsettling, as if a net could carry a memory or a haunting. In a way, they do. Ghost nets are lost or abandoned fishing gear—nets, traps, lines—that keep doing what they were designed to do long after being discarded: catching, entangling, and killing marine life. But unlike an active fishing operation, there’s no harvest, no benefit. Just destruction. Silent, continuous destruction.
For most people, the ocean is a mystery—a dazzling blur of blue on a holiday postcard or a passing idea in a climate change headline. But for freedivers, the ocean is personal. It’s intimate. It’s where we go to be humbled, to stretch our lungs, to feel alive. We don’t just swim through it. We listen to it. We learn from it. And we see what others don’t.
The first time you see a ghost net, it doesn’t immediately register. It’s just a dark mass, waving gently, almost beautifully, in the current. Then you get closer. You notice the bones. The coral scraped raw. The turtle that didn’t make it. It’s jarring, not just because it’s gruesome, but because it’s avoidable. A floating trap, not set by malice, but by negligence.
One freediver from the Canary Islands described a recurring nightmare after finding a dolphin tangled in monofilament netting. “Its eye was open,” she said. “Like it had just been looking around for help.” But there was no one. Not until she swam by. That dolphin wasn’t a rare case. According to a 2020 study published in Science Advances, an estimated 46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of discarded fishing gear. Ghost gear is not a peripheral issue—it’s central. It’s immense. It’s global.
The data is difficult to ignore. Each year, between 500,000 and 1 million tons of fishing gear is lost or discarded in the ocean. That’s roughly the equivalent weight of 75,000 African elephants. In one analysis by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), more than 100,000 whales, dolphins, seals, and turtles are estimated to die from ghost gear entanglement annually. Not counting fish. Not counting seabirds. And the duration of impact is staggering. Synthetic fishing nets made from nylon, polypropylene, or polyethylene can take centuries to degrade, all while continuing to entangle and harm.
Worse, ghost nets often settle on sensitive marine habitats like coral reefs, where their weight breaks delicate structures, and their synthetic fibers smother new growth. Coral, already stressed by warming seas, acidification, and pollution, has little chance against the relentless abrasion of tangled netting. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that each ghost net kills an average of 500,000 marine animals over its "lifetime" in the water. That’s not a typo.
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down tourism and disrupted local economies, there was a sudden and dangerous side effect in many parts of the world: a spike in illegal or poorly regulated fishing. And with it, more ghost nets. A recent Malaysian study covering Tioman Island found that 21 metric tons of ghost nets were retrieved over six years, with sharp increases noted in 2020 and 2022. Divers and researchers attributed this to reduced marine patrols and a lack of alternative livelihoods. The irony? While the planet slowed down, the ocean’s wounds opened up.
Ghost gear doesn’t always look like a trawling net. Sometimes it’s a single monofilament line wrapped tightly around a fish’s gills. Sometimes it’s a rusted crab pot, half-submerged, with a lobster claw sticking out between the bars. Sometimes it’s a bundle of ropes and hooks sitting in the sand like a forgotten snare. In Sardinia, divers found an octopus using a discarded lobster trap as a den. It was ingenious, yes—but heartbreaking. Because the trap was still functional. And the octopus couldn’t leave.
It’s not uncommon for freedivers exploring underwater caves or shipwrecks to stumble on these kinds of improvised death chambers. In many cases, it's impossible to tell how long they've been there—or how many creatures they’ve already claimed. Ghost nets don’t just disappear. They break down into microplastics, contaminating plankton and tiny marine organisms. These particles then travel up the food chain: from small fish to larger predators, to humans.
Studies have found microplastics in salt, drinking water, and even human breast milk. We are, quite literally, consuming the consequences of our own carelessness. And unlike other plastic pollutants—bags, bottles, packaging—fishing gear is specifically designed to kill. Its harm isn’t passive. It’s mechanical. It strangles, punctures, tightens, slices.
But there’s hope—and it’s not hypothetical. The Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), launched by World Animal Protection in 2015, has become a powerful coalition involving governments, NGOs, and corporations committed to addressing ghost gear at every stage: from design to recovery to recycling. Meanwhile, companies are developing biodegradable fishing nets—some made from plant-based fibers like coir or biopolymers that naturally break down in water. These aren't mainstream yet, but the direction is promising.
There are also local heroes. In the Philippines, freediving volunteers have formed teams to remove ghost nets by hand from deep reefs. In Greece, divers work alongside marine biologists in Aegean sanctuaries, removing fishing lines from Posidonia seagrass meadows that provide critical nursery grounds for countless species. And in a compelling example of circular economy thinking, some organizations now collect ghost nets and transform them into products—from clothes to carpet tiles to swimsuits. Brands like Patagonia and Healthy Seas and are turning destruction into design.
If there’s one group uniquely equipped to both witness and respond to this crisis, it’s freedivers. No bubbles, no tanks—just lungs, skill, and an unparalleled sensitivity to the underwater world. We are often the first to notice when something’s wrong. The familiar reef looks different. The fish are fewer. The visibility is choked. And then, the glint of something synthetic where there should be none.
Some freedivers carry knives, not just for self-protection but for untangling the lives of others. Cutting free a turtle. Unwrapping a fishing line from a grouper’s jaw. Freeing an eel from the mesh of a bag. But it’s dangerous. Ghost nets snag quickly. They can catch a fin, a weight belt, or even a human limb. Removal should never be attempted alone, or without training. Still, the impact is tangible. Every freediver who participates in a clean-up dive, who reports the coordinates of a ghost net to local authorities, or who educates fellow divers about what to look for—each of these actions ripples outward.
There’s a stillness to freediving that forces reflection. Suspended in saltwater, between breaths, the ocean becomes a mirror. It shows us what we’ve done. What we’ve lost. What we can still save. Ghost nets are part of that story—but they don’t have to be the ending. The more we learn, the more we act, the more we speak out—the closer we get to an ocean that doesn’t need to whisper for help beneath the surface. It can’t pull the nets off itself. But maybe, just maybe, we can.