Ghost Nets to Good Nets
The Good Net project is a team effort between FIVB and environmental groups, acting as one to remove Ghost Nets from the ocean and give them new life as volleyball nets.
A Marine Conservation Problem
A Marine Conservation Problem
Ghost nets are lost, abandoned or discarded fishing nets.
They are the most harmful kind of marine waste: turtles, whales, dolphins - even humans – can become entangled in these traps and slowly die of exhaustion, suffocation or starvation.
Ghost nets can last for centuries, drifting through the oceans while continuing to kill and posing a growing threat to the marine ecosystem.
Around the UK, at least one large sea mammal dies from becoming trapped in a ghost net every week.
A Plastic Pollution Problem
A Plastic Pollution Problem
By 2050, the plastic in the sea will outweigh the fish. A vast amount of the plastic in our oceans is abandoned fishing gear. Ghost nets are the deadliest kind of plastic waste and 640 000 tons of fishing gear are left in the oceans every year.
At least 46% of the plastic in the “Great Pacific garbage patch,”- a floating gyre the size of France made up of plastic - consists of abandoned fishing nets.
The Good Net journey.
The Good Net project was launched in March 2019 in Copacabana, Brazil. For the first time, disused fishing nets (ghost nets) were given a new lease of life and repurposed into volleyball nets. These nets were then welcome by renowned volleyball champions
and fans alike at FIVB events across the globe in 2019.
Why Copacabana? Well, as the home of beach volleyball, the most recent beach volleyball Olympic venue and a commercial fishing community, there was no place more suited to be the home of this marine sustainability initiative.
Here is the list of the next events supporting this project:
