Last weekend June 25-26, 2016 no less than two Healthy Seas clean-up missions took place parallel at the Dutch North Sea, resulting in more than 2,5 tons of discarded fishing gear.

Aquila Charter with ten volunteer divers left Scheveningen harbor on Saturday 25 June for a one-day clean-up dive, while salvage vessel MV Bela with Healthy Seas divers on board departed from Stellendam on that same day for a two-day intensive cleaning mission. The two groups of divers together with our partner, salvage company Pan Salvage, cleaned up several shipwrecks during the weekend.

The salvage team visited the SS Tubantia, a Dutch passenger ship that sunk exactly 100 years ago, and just within 2.5 hours 42 kg of lost recreational fishing gear and an approximately half a kilometer long gill net was brought up.

The diving team went back to the shipwreck named “Rode Poon” (Red Gurnard) and removed a huge amount of lost recreational and commercial fishing gear by hand. This specific wreck has been cleaned up already several times in the last few years but newly lost recreational fishing gear and mainly gill nets are found again every time they visit it.

Check out the photos!