The popular dive spot is southeast of the Philippine capital, Manila.
BBC Philippine correspondent Howard Johnson joined dive professionals from Anilao Scuba Dive Centre as they resumed diving, following the national lockdown. The dive centre is affiliated to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Green Fins, which promotes sustainable marine tourism in South-East Asia.
It was delivered by a very tall, quiet Dutchman by the name of Pascal van Erp. Pascal explained how he had started to recover abandoned ghost fishing gear entangled on wrecks in 2009. He soon inspired others to join him. It was not long before organised teams of volunteer technical divers were recovering tons of ghost fishing gear off the Dutch coastline. In 2012, Van Erp formally founded the not-for-profit Ghost Fishing organisation.
Ghost fishing—a lost or abandoned net or other fishing equipment that is snagged on a reef or wreck—continues to trap marine wildlife.
According to a new study published in the Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene journal, the processing of Alaskan pollock into fish sticks, imitation crab, and fish fillets generates nearly twice the emissions produced by fishing itself.
Isabelle Côté, a Simon Fraser University professor of marine ecology and conservation, has co-authored a new study that finds little would be lost by eliminating high seas fishing.
In this study Côté and her colleagues evaluated the impact of closing deep-sea fishing on fisheries' catches and values, and their economic consequences for individual countries, identifying which nations would stand to financially gain or lose.
