A giant floating net filled with hundreds of decomposing sharks and other sea creatures was found by a group of divers that were swimming near the Cayman Islands. The eerie photos were posted on Instagram in 2018.
Dominick Martin-Mayes, a 27-year-old fisher and diving instructor witnessed the scene and was shocked.
Sadly, the divers had to leave the area and cut their rescue efforts short because they worried they could get trapped in the net themselves.
Fortunately, fisher Charles Ebanks later returned to the place where the net was originally discovered and managed to bring it out of the ocean.
About 46 percent of the 79 thousand tons of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made of fishing nets, as shown in a study published in March 2018 in Scientific Reports. This study indicated that annual plastic consumption has reached more than 320 million tonnes, with more plastic being produced in the last ten years than ever before.
The National Journal estimates that about 20 percent of all the sea creatures who are caught in commercial fishing nets are “bycatch,” or unwanted animals.
Dominick Martin-mayes (@dmartinmayes) on
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