As part of an international cleanup initiative, teams from Black Sea coastal nations have retrieved over 2 tonnes of marine debris while locating and removing ghost nets — lost or discarded fishing gear continues to pose a danger to sea life.
Coşkun Erüz, a professor at Karadeniz Technical University’s (KTÜ) faculty of marine sciences, said around 10,000 pieces of fishing material have been identified along the eastern Black Sea coast so far, with more than 2,000 kilograms of debris recovered from the sea and coastal areas.
The cleanup is part of the EU-funded “Saving the Black Sea from Silent Killers: Ghost Nets” project, led by Romania with the participation of Türkiye, Bulgaria and Georgia. The project has a total budget of around 500,000 euros ($578,122) under the EU Black Sea Cross-Border Cooperation Program.
Speaking at a press briefing in the northern province of Trabzon, Erüz explained that ghost nets are fishing tools that have been discarded, lost or broken off during use but continue to drift and trap fish and other sea creatures.
Ghost nets make up about 20 percent of the plastic-based litter in the sea, according to the expert. Unlike other waste, these nets don’t form large clumps — they drift freely like invisible predators, continuing to catch marine life.
"Ghost nets harm all living creatures in the seas. They constantly shift location. This is a system that continues to catch and kill in different, unknown areas. It's an involuntary, illicit form of fishing,” Erüz explained.
Scientific studies show these ghost nets can remain active for between four and 20 years in the seas.
Erüz underlined that many fishing nets are lost in the Black Sea each year.
“When a single fishing net is lost, it can weigh 100 to 300 kilograms. But during recovery, it breaks apart, so we remove it in small fragments weighing five to ten kilograms,” he said. “Each net can cover an area of about 500 square meters, up to 100 meters long and five meters deep.”
The ultimate goal of the teams is to prevent ghost nets from being lost in the first place and to recover those already drifting, using both human divers and underwater robots.
According to Erüz, the 18-month project is already well underway.
“So far, we have reached and trained more than 500 people, including fishers and representatives from public institutions. Cooperation activities are continuing,” he said.
As part of the project, detailed surveys were performed both underwater and along the coastline to locate concentrations of ghost nets, ensuring that these critical areas were precisely mapped and recorded.
