A couple a days ago I wrote about some depressing news that many shark species are facing extinction.

Today I found some good news from Ireland about our oceans. According to an article on Yahoo the Irish Sea Fisheries Board will start to clean up “ghost nets” in northeast Atlantic Ocean.
Ghost nets are abandoned and dumped fishing nets that are catching big amounts of fish and other marine life. The amount of deepwater sharks has declined rapidly because of these ghost nets (I would think because of overfishing too).

A study made by Irish, Norwegian and British scientists estimates that 1,254 kilometers (620 miles) of 600 by 50 meter (1,970 by 164 feet) sheets of nets are lost each year. That is a mind numbing amount!

I hope the Irish Sea Fisheries Board are successful in cleaning up the northeast Atlantic Ocean and that other governments will do the same time. The fishing industry should also look into their practices and stop dumping fishing nets.

When I walk along the coastline here in Northern Norway it is very sad to see the enormous amounts of trash that has been washed ashore. A good deal of this trash seems to be coming from fishing boats, like parts of fishing nets and rope. Trash like this can entangle and kill marine life. Smaller plastic parts are also known to be eaten by fish and sea birds thus bringing toxins into the ecologic system.
It is time to clean our oceans and stop treating them like massive waste bins!