When diver Micke Tilja was diving at Saltströmmen in northern Norway, he found several abandoned fish cages on the seabed. In one of them, he found a trapped, injured cod, which he decided to rescue.
‘My feeling was that this was an animal in great distress that had been sitting there for a long time and had pretty much given up hope,’ Micke describes.
In total, there were six fishing cages on the seabed, all of which were disconnected from the surface. This led Micke and his diving team to conclude that it was probably a case of so-called ghost fishing. That is, lost fishing equipment that has been lost in one way or another and continues to kill fish and other animals on the seabed.
‘These cages can continue to fish for several years if things go badly,’ says Niklas Nilsson, who was also involved in the dive in Saltströmmen.
A global problem
A report from 2022 estimates that almost 2 per cent of all fishing gear is lost each year, which means 740,000 kilometres of fishing line and more than 25 million fishing cages globally. In addition, a large proportion of fishing gear is made of plastic, which leads to further problems with littering.
See the diving team in Saltströmmen open the cages and release the cod in the clip.
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