Alarming situation
Sea Shepherd's fight against abandoned nets
Since April 2025, crew members from Sea Shepherd Germany have been touring selected cities with their new documentary ‘Geisternetze – Kampf um die Ostsee’ to draw attention to the alarming state of the Baltic Sea. The last screening for the time being will take place on 23 May 2025 at GEOMAR in Kiel. However, due to the overwhelmingly positive response, Sea Shepherd is already working on additional dates. The events are supported by a variety of guests, including Captain Peter Hammarstedt, one of the faces of Sea Shepherd Global, the film crew from Black Forest Collective, and members of Bracenet, a company that works with Sea Shepherd to upcycle old fishing nets into jewellery, bracelets, and other useful items. In a subsequent open Q&A session, guests will have the opportunity to gain further exciting insights into the making of the documentary and Sea Shepherd’s campaign work. We were at the screening in Hamburg on May 12th 2025 and would like to share our impressions.
Ghost nets – silent killers
The main focus of the accompanying campaign was the recovery of ghost nets (nets that have been lost or abandoned in the sea). These are industrial fishing nets that get caught on shipwrecks, for example, and are then left behind by trawlers. The nets can remain there for years and become death traps for all kinds of marine animals. Fish get tangled in the nets and attract larger animals such as seals and porpoises, which in turn get caught and die. In the Q&A, campaign manager Florian Stadler pointed out that it is not uncommon to find more than 1,000 dead animals in the recovered nets. Even though help came too late for many of the animals, the crew members were able to rescue individual sea creatures from time and time again. These successes were essential for morale during this huge task. Securing ghost nets is a difficult and dangerous process. It requires a well-trained team of divers who work at depths of 30 metres or more for long periods of time with heavy tools such as bolt cutters. Inflatable air cushions are used to catapult the cut nets to the surface of the water. The divers have to be careful not to get tangled up in the shooting net and pulled up with it. The dives are also made more difficult by poor visibility and weather conditions. Despite these challenges, the last two missions were complete successes. While 10 tonnes of ghost nets were recovered during the 2023 operation, which was documented in the film, the current operation has recovered almost 25 tonnes.
The Baltic Sea – an ecosystem on the brink of collapse
Unfortunately, ghost nets are not the only problem severely affecting the Baltic Sea. Metaphorically speaking, the Baltic Sea resembles a hospital patient in intensive care with multiple organ failure. Countless problems are putting pressure on the marine flora and fauna. Overfishing is endangering entire fish stocks.
Species such as cod and herring are so severely threatened that their populations have already passed the tipping point.1 Without immediate and strict regulation of fishing, recovery of these stocks is virtually impossible. Added to this is pollution and eutrophication (nutrient oversaturation) by neighbouring countries, which creates so-called dead zones. These are underwater zones where the oxygen content is so low that neither fish nor other marine animals can survive. In recent decades, this area has increased almost tenfold and now covers one sixth (!) of the Baltic Sea.2 In addition, the Baltic Sea is more vulnerable to climate change than other seas. This is because it has only three small inlets that allow water to exchange, which means that temperature regulation is much slower. As a result, the Baltic Sea heats up about three times faster than other oceans. This also poses an existential threat to marine life and plant species. If the Baltic Sea ecosystem were to collapse completely, the consequences would be incalculable.
Time for change
In view of these enormous challenges and their catastrophic consequences, swift and decisive action is required. We would like to thank Sea Shepherd for putting this issue on the agenda and making many people aware of the importance of their work. If you would like to see for yourself, we highly recommend attending the event in Kiel on May 23rd, 2025. Or keep an eye out for further screenings in your area. You can find an overview at: https://sea-shepherd.de/geisternetze/. Sea Shepherd also welcomes any donations. Campaigns in the Baltic Sea are complex and financially challenging: the crew members must be fed, the ship must be maintained, and bureaucratic hurdles must be overcome in order to obtain permission for the rescue operations. Support in any form is important. Bring the issue to the attention of political decision-makers and show that everything must be done to ensure a healthy Baltic Sea.
Unfortunately, for most fish, liberation from ghost nets comes too late.
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