Fish Farm Clean Up: What they pulled from a Forty Ton Ghost Farm will SHOCK you!

0:00 Shocking footage from a cleanup project of a ghost fish farm in Greece reveals the true cost of mismanagement what looked like a quiet stretch of water hid more than 40 tons of plastic cages, nets, pipes, and even sunken boats. This entire entire site had been left to rott after a fish farm shut down turning the sea floor into a toxic scrap yard that continued to break apart and pollute the Saronic Gulf. Today, i'm taking you inside what the divers found, how they hauled this mountain of waste out of the ocean, and why ghost farms like this are becoming one of the most overlooked threats to the coastal ecosystems. We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of How To Protect The Ocean Podcast.

0:42 Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, marine biologist and science communicator here to tell you what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. Now on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about why fish farms are being left abandoned, and what happens to the coastline when fish farms are just left to just disintegrate and pollute the ocean in this small local area of the Saronic sea that we're gonna be talking about today. But speaking of coastal systems, we need to talk more about the health of coastal ecosystems, and that's why I am trying to get a new podcast funded all about one of the most productive and coolest and probably the most untalked, like not talked about coastal ecosystem that's around and that is seagrass habitats.

1:34 I'm trying to fund a new podcast called The Seagrass Effect, that talks about seagrass science, conservation, and restoration to really understand for having you understand and help disseminate the information around seagrasses, the research, the conservation, the restoration. It's all important, but we don't talk about it enough and we need to talk about it more. Researchers don't talk to each other enough, and this podcast will help connect research and researchers and conservationists and restoration projects around the world, and I can't wait to bring that to you, but I'm funding this podcast through crowdfunding through balean.org. It's a new organization that is helping people with independent projects get their projects funded to help with ocean conservation. So if you go to speak up for blue.com/seagrass, you can go and participate in helping fund this podcast.

2:20 Not only are you gonna be funding podcast to share information and connect researchers and conservationists and restoration sites, but you're also going to be helping restore seagrass habitats, and we're gonna be tracking it all along the way, and I can't wait for you to be a part of that. Go to speak up for blue.com/seagrass to help fund the Seagrass Effect podcast. That'll be coming soon as soon as we get it funded. Crowdfunding by the people, for the people, for the ocean. So this, if you wanna do something for the ocean, this is something that you can do if you really believe in it. So I hope you ask questions, let me know in the comments below or hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean. But anyway, let's get back into the show. We're talking today about coastal ecosystems that need to be cleaned up. And so this is what happens in Greece.

3:01 We've teamed up with Healthy Seas. I'm gonna link to the episode right above here that I did with Healthy Seas before we did an interview about why they need to clean up these sites? Why does Greece have all these abandoned fish farms? And is Greece the only country that has abandoned fish farms? Which that's not true. But this is an area in the Saronic Gulf in Methana, where there was an abandoned fish farm just along the coastline. It's kind of weird. And there's a bit in the open ocean in the coast. But it's hard to get to. It's hard to manage and nobody's actually looking at it, and you'll be shocked at what they actually picked up and what they found. It is unreal what people are willing to leave in the ocean, whether it's sunk or whether they left it floating. It doesn't matter. Like the ocean's harsh, so eventually this stuff kind of just gets destroyed and sinks to the bottom of the ocean and then it pollutes.

3:45 It's essentially that's what it was. So this is showing how these fish farms contribute to marine pollution where you have rust, where you have metals from anything metal that's actually disintegrating. You have plastics and netting and everything. If you think about what an open pen site looks like, it is a bunch of circles or squares that are floating at the surface. They look harmless at the top. And they're just like, they might be plastic around the size. Some of it might be metal at the top. It all depends on who built it. And you just see this top and you're like, oh, what are these circles? What are these squares? And they're like, oh yeah, that's where they grow fish. And so you have all these areas but when the fish are gone and the pen shuts down, what happens to these pens? Like how does the company actually clean 'em up? Well, in Greece, apparently they don't, they don't clean them up, and so they're allowed to abandon them, which is not in the law.

4:28 It's actually in the law for them to clean it up, but that doesn't get enforced. And so Healthy Seas in partnership with the. I'm gonna try and pronounce this probably 'cause it's Greek. So the Healthy Seas Foundation in partnership with Athanasios C. Laskaridis Charitable Foundation. So Athanasios C. Laskaridis Charitable Foundation teamed up to help pick up this fish farm. Now is this the first fish farm that the Healthy Seas has done? No, this is actually the fifth ghost farm that they've actually cleaned up under the Healthy Seas Operation Ghost Farms. So this is something that's really, really important and it's supported by none other than Hyundai Motor Europe, and the volunteer technical divers from Ghost Diving. So there are a lot of people involved in this. Not only is Healthy Seas, which is a smaller organization that has a big volunteer network, and then you have the Charitable Foundation, Athanasios C. Laskaridis Charitable Foundation.

5:18 So they're helping out Hyundai Motors helping out, and you know how they're helping out because they take the ghost nets and they make mats out of them, like the foot mats, the car mats out of them. Believe it or not, that's happened. It's just amazing what you can do when you take somebody's trash and you make into something that they could sell, that they could put in these cars, and that's more reusable, more sustainable for the planet by not keeping them in the ocean by taking the nets out of the ocean. So let's go over what they found. This is unreal. So a total of 40.1 tons of marine litter was collected. 30.8 of that was tons of plastic cages. The HDPE plastic cages. These are the cages that kind of set up the nets that you see. 30.8 tons of those.

5:59 2.5 tons of fishing nets. Think about this. A fishing is pretty light. With the actual fiber in it, the plastic fiber of it all is pretty light. You have two and a half tons of it. That adds up a lot of weight. That's insane. 1.6 tons of styrofoam. Imagine what styrofoam does in the ocean. Once it starts to break down, you get those little mini pellets and they start to float at the top. Sometimes they sink 'cause they're covered by something and all these fish float at the top and they start eating them and they start going into their system, whether they adjust them or not. They start going into the system, at some point it's gonna get in there. And that's not good for them because all the toxins that make up as the body of this fish tries to break down each and every one of those little pellets.

6:40 All those metals, all those contaminants get into their tissue. Those fish get eaten by other larger predatory fish which get eaten by larger marine mammals or sharks or other predatory fish and mammals and seabirds. And those get the same kind of accumulation of toxins from these little pellets, and then that goes into their systems and they could eventually die from poisoning. Even choking hazards if those little pellets haven't broken down yet. And then of course you have 5.2 tons of metal cages, buoys and 2 2 sunken boats. Imagine that you're just gonna leave that. And of course, it filled with 12 industrial containers. So those were all filled with some kind of material that is obviously not great.

7:22 So the fishing nets were sorted. The suitable ones sent to the aquifer for econo yarn. It goes to help the HDPE pipes and plastic parks were sent to local recycling and the significant materials we're diverted to long-term pollution pathways. So these are materials that won't break down easily, that when they break down they become toxic. So they have to go through a different process, and that is like a long-term pollution pathway. These ghost farms, they're abandoned aquaculture sites. They become underwater junkyards. They become pollutants, they become harmful to fish, they become harmful to seabirds and also other large predatory fish that will bioaccumulate all those harmful substances in their tissues as they eat these fish that are basically toxic.

8:03 The pollution will continue for years. Like these boats will not just break down. They will rust forever. They will continue to pollute and without any kind of oversight or management, they're just gonna sit there abandon and affecting this environment. And of course there's a lot of impacts on the ecosystem. Fish habitat underneath, like you can't have seagrasses underneath these types of aquaculture pens because you have boats that are sunk. You have the nets that are covering everything. There's shading and everything, and it's just gonna ruin that. So you're not gonna have good quality, productive ecosystems and habitats that make up those kind of coastal areas or even in open water. 'cause this waters Mediterranean we're talking about. It's quite clear and we're probably not talking about a huge depth. And you'll see from the videos from the B roll that we're showing.

8:44 You'll see that it's not like crazy deep, and you can have different habitats that are very productive that will promote biodiversity, that will promote stability in those systems if it's not polluted and if there's not a bunch of stuff on the ground, like boats and nets and so forth. So it'll really help to have that. And of course, good water quality that's not full of toxins from the styrofoam and the plastics and the metal resting and stuff like that. Also, in this bonus of cleaning up not only the ocean, they decide to do a cleanup of the beach because a lot of times that styrofoam is gonna come up on the beach. It's gonna wash up. Other materials might wash up. Over the years, like people who have gone to the beach and may not have treated it very well, that got cleaned up. So, it was a cleanup with 21 participants.

9:26 16 large bags of degraded plastics and marine debris were removed, which is great. Materials at risk of becoming microplastics were removed which is wonderful. And of course, Healthy Seas expanded their education programs this year. So 435 students and professionals were reached. Events in Greece, Italy, Germany, and the UK happened. And of course, local kindergarten and primary school in Methena participated in not only the beach cleanup, but looking at other stuff as well. So these are important projects that happen with local communities. We see the education that happens with the schools. They participated in the beach cleanup, they participated in other parts of the cleanup, and they got to see what it was like to actually participate, not just observe.

10:08 Like there are times when you come out and you see a beach that is just polluted and you are there to have a vacation or you're there to relax. Maybe you live in the local area and you're there to relax. And you see this beach polluted. You hate it, but you're not gonna clean it up because why? You don't feel incentivized to do it. You kind of feel down about yourself 'cause when you see that kind of stuff, it's never gonna make you feel good and you may not want to clean it up. I know sometimes I didn't want to clean it up, but when you have a community that participates in this and they clean it up, it makes you want to clean up other beaches when you go to another beach or you go to somewhere else. Even a river system or even a local area, even in your local neighborhood where you're like, you know what, like I've participated in cleanups before. I want to keep my area clean, so I'm gonna go and I'm gonna clean it up.

10:48 It incentivizes you and inspires you to do more and I think that's really good. So that's something that's great. Obviously ghost farms are still global issue, not just a Greek one. It's found in other places. Collaboration is key when you do these types of projects. And then having like a recycling partnerships with local areas can give new life to marine waste. You can take those fishing nets and provide mats that, car mats that go into cars for Hyundai cars. Like, that's just amazing. Obviously, it's not gonna fit like the one site or two sites, or three sites. The plastic you're gonna find from those nets aren't going to be the end all and be all for car mats for the car industry, but at least it can have some good, reusable outcomes and more sustainability with that when normally you wouldn't see that at all.

11:31 So having that, where those recycling partnerships are really important. Plus these companies are proud to give money to help with this cleanup that it costs. You're looking at divers, you're looking at boat time, you're looking at some pretty hefty equipment to get some of this stuff out. Taking a boat out of water is not gonna be easy. You can't just do that with people. You're gonna have to do that with machinery and that's gonna help with that. And of course, obviously education helps build the surrounding foundations of local communities and what they can do to help out their local area. So I think that's really important. So the big thing here is we're showcasing Healthy Seas and I highly recommend that you support Healthy Seas. If you feel like you want to do something. If you feel like you wanna do something, you can support the podcast for seagrasses so that we can get more information outta seagrass and we can restore seagrass sites.

12:13 If you want people more of these ghost fish farms to be cleaned up, Healthy Seas is doing that. They have the mechanisms, they have the partnerships, they have the ability to do it, and they have the proven service to be able to do that. So if you want to see less ghost farms in the ocean, you can support organizations and specifically Healthy Seas, and I'll put a link so that you can support that there. You can also share awareness. Share this video, share the content that comes out of this podcast, and share the content that comes out of Healthy Seas. I'll put a link to their channel so that people can be more aware that you know what? Ghost fish farms are a thing and that shouldn't be. The company should not be abandoning these fish farms without cleaning them up first. I don't care what situation they're in. They have the responsibility to clean up since they managed it and they bought it over at some point.

12:56 Whether they put it in or they just bought it over, they have to take it out and the governments should be focusing on making sure that those come out and making sure that these companies are held accountable to that. So having that awareness of aquaculture waste and ghost fish farms, that's really important too. And of course, you know, looking at restoring these ecosystems. There's no reason why we should be looking out into the ocean and seeing pollution just sitting there. We should have the ability not only be able to see the pollution, but be able to take out the pollution or have mechanisms like people, like Healthy Seas and their partnerships to be able to come in and take out all that pollution, the nets, the boats, the cages, everything like that. And then being able to watch this site, restore it and sometimes itself, or have somebody else come in and restore it with sea grasses or coral reefs planting or mangrove planting, depending on where you are.

13:44 So I think it's really important to see that recovery and restoration of these projects is really, really important. So I think it's extremely important that I want to highlight this. I wanna thank Healthy Seas for making me aware of this project and for partnering with on this video and letting me have access to their footage and their pictures. And I wanna thank everybody that was involved in this project. It's something that we need to see more of, and I wanted to help showcase this because it's such an important aspect of what we need to do and what we need to see, the people helping out, making sure that these ecosystems are intact, they're restored, and they're cleaned up. It's something that's very, very important. So that's it for today's episode. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. If you have any questions or comments, you can leave them in the comments below in this YouTube video.

14:27 Or if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast app, you can just hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean that's at how to protect the ocean. Or if you want to email me, you can do so. Go speak up for blue.com/contact and just fill out the form. It goes right to my personal email. I'd be happy to send you a message back. And I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin from the true nor strong and free, have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.