The weekend of July 22 & 23, two Dutch diving teams head to the North Sea from two different harbors in The Netherlands. Ghost Fishing is leaving from Scheveningen (west) and Diving team Zeester is leaving from Lauwersoog (north) for two days! They all have the same mission: Lost fishing gear removal for Healthy Seas.

The Dutch Ghost Fishing team operating from Aquila Charter visited the shipwrecks named Klipper and Juffermans. At the Klipper the team had the advantage of great visibility and they managed to remove quite a substantial amount of nets and approximately 30 kg (!) of lead. They also freed an entangled lobster from fishing line. The second dive of the day at the Juffermans shipwreck proved to be a bit smaller than last year as most of the shipwreck has disappeared under the ever shifting sandy North Sea bottom. Still the team was able to find lost fishing nets and removed them all. In total four full 55 liter barrels were filled to the rim and the Juffermans shipwreck is now free of lost fishing gear.

Wreck Diving Team Zeester is diving two days and heading to the shipwrecks “477” and “Mewa” located in the Northern part of the North Sea. Both clean-up days consists of two dives. On the first day, they removed a huge amount of large trawler nets from the unidentified shipwreck with number “477”. The second day, working on shipwreck “Mewa”, they separate the majority of the fishing nets already ath the first dive but still a lot was stuck down there. During the second dive they managed to cut off all fishing nets and the shipwreck is now completely free of lost gear. During the removal they found many entangled animals which were released again.

A big thank you to all divers involved, more missions coming up soon!