Reports came in to Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society from Saltaire Fishing Charters on Friday 22 July of a ghost net which had been snagged on a section of the Great Barrier Reef in between Undine and St Crispin’s Reefs.

Ghost nets are derelict fishing nets that have been either deliberately cut loose or accidently lost from fishing vessels at sea. They drift with the currents until they are snagged on reefs or beached on the shoreline.

The threat that these nets pose is of entanglement and drowning of marine mammals, turtles and other marine life or damage to coral reefs, or of damage to vessels through propeller strike.

Interestingly this net was found two days after a forum at James Cook University, Townsville, on Turtle Triage and rehabilitation with ingestion of plastics and entanglement in ghost nets listed as key threatening processes to marine turtles.

Poseidon Outer Reef Cruises were able to do a reconnaissance dive on the net last Sunday on their way out to the Agincourt Reef for their regular day charter. The dive showed a net snagged on the reef at a depth of around 14m with a group of buoys attached to the other end of the net floating at the surface.

Poseidon crew are well aware of the damage posed by ghost nets, and so during the day they devised a plan to remove the net on their way home.

The plan was successful and the dive crew were able to remove a mammoth 21 metres of ghost net from the reef, which included buoys, reinforcing metal wire and thick rope.

Arriving back at the Port Douglas Marina, it turned out that at the other end of the reef that day more marine debris had been removed from the ocean, with another charter boat, Saltaire, pulling a 15 square metre tarpaulin out of the water during the day.

The plastic tarpaulin had obvious shark teeth marks and smaller fish bites highlighting the threat that marine debris also poses to marine life through ingestion.

With changing wind patterns and tides marine debris in the form of ghost nets and rubbish from land and sea activities continues to impact the Far North Queensland coastline and the Great Barrier Reef.

GhostNets Australia – a north Australian based NGO devoted to solving the issues of ghost nets, yesterday applauded the efforts of the dive and boating community in recognising and safety seeking to deal with underwater nets and debris.

“Ghost nets and marine debris are a global phenomenon”, said project officer Jen Goldberg, “And it’s inspiring when the wider saltwater community work together for cleaner oceans and healthier seas”.

Details of the net, its location and descriptors will be entered into a larger data base being compiled by GhostNets Australia in an effort to identify the source of the nets reaching Australian shores.

It is awesome to see local charter operators proactively removing this threat to marine life whenever they have the opportunity.

Heidi Taylor from Tangaroa Blue is the coordinator for the Far North Queensland Marine Debris Project