New warnings about ‘ghost nets’ have been issued after two dead sharks were found tangled up in a large fishing net in the waters off East End.
Staff from Tortuga Divers noticed the large net in time to avoid any damage to the vessel and crew, but when removing the net from the water, dive staff found two dead specimens entangled in the net: one juvenile nurse shark and another shark carcass that was too heavily decayed for identification.
Floating net spotted
Mark Elliott, boat captain and dive instructor at Tortuga Divers, said he was returning from a dive trip on 27 Aug. when he came across the net in the water.
“We were almost back at Morritt’s when we saw it floating on the water,” he said. “We managed to slow down and turn in time, so we just clipped the edge with one of the rudders, else it would have tangled around the propellers. We usually find pieces of net floating around but this was unusually large.”
As well as removing the net, the divers reported the incident to the Department of Environment, which collected the dead sharks so they could be examined by DoE shark research coordinator Johanna Kohler for further data collection.
In a social media post about the incident, DoE warned about the problem of abandoned fishing nets, also called ‘ghost nets’, and other items left in the ocean, which can cause serious health hazards to marine life.
It said, “Marine species might get entangled or ingest foreign objects leading to injury or death. Though the net likely originated offshore, the nurse shark that died in the net was most likely an individual from Cayman. While many ghost nets and other forms of marine trash drift into Cayman waters from elsewhere, their removal is immensely beneficial in protecting local ecosystems.”
Entangled marine life
Elliott said, “A floating net like that can catch again and again. The longer they stay out, the more they catch, and that will attract other marine animals who will in turn get caught.”
The problem of ‘ghost nets’ is not a new one. Seven years ago, fishermen found hundreds of dead fish and sharks tangled in an abandoned net drifting off Grand Cayman. The ‘ghost net’ might have been floating for several months, trapping and killing everything in its path, marine researchers said.
An underwater image, taken by Dominick Martin-Mayes, one of the fishermen who made the discovery, showed an oceanic whitetip shark trapped in the outer web of the net. He said that he could also see jacks, triple tails, big ocean turbots and a variety of pelagic fish caught inside.
The trapped animals attract sharks and other predators. Unless ‘ghost nets’ are recovered or make landfall, they can drift indefinitely, trapping yet more marine creatures.
“It is heartbreaking,” said Martin-Mayes at the time. “The fish come and eat what is there and get caught up in it themselves, so it just snowballs and becomes this gigantic floating net of death.”
Eyesore finally removed
In 2023, US couple John and Carol Koerner spent nearly a month removing a 150-foot-long and 40-foot-wide abandoned fishing net from a Little Cayman beach where it had lain for years.
The net, shaped like a wind sock, with three separate layers, weighed an estimated 3,500 pounds and had been an eyesore on the beach for an estimated 10 years or more.
The Koerners, from Vermont, who spent several months of every year on Little Cayman, used handsaws and pruning shears to cut the net down to a size where it could be carried off the beach. The net was then repurposed by locals into household items such as shopping bags.