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A ghost net cleanup initiative has successfully recovered abandoned fishing gear across six sites in Balikesir, Türkiye, using the "Blue Atlas" mobile app. The project was launched last year by the Marine Life Conservation Society alongside the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's General Directorate of Fisheries and Aquaculture.
The retrieved ghost nets are large enough to completely drape Istanbul's Camlica Tower, highlighting the scale of marine pollution and ongoing efforts to protect biodiversity in the Sea of Marmara.
Camlica Tower is a 369-meter communications and observation tower, the tallest structure in Türkiye, located on the Asian side of Istanbul. It was built to replace multiple older broadcast antennas across the city.
Ghost nets are commercial fishing lines unintentionally lost or abandoned at sea. According to officials, these nets drift through the water or settle on the seabed, where they continuously trap and kill marine life.
The operation resulted in the recovery of massive ghost nets, which had remained underwater for years, trapping and killing marine species while posing a serious threat to the marine ecosystem.
Türkiye has removed about 2.9 million square meters of ghost nets from its seas over the past 11 years as part of a nationwide project to protect marine life and support sustainable fishing practices.
According to Turgay Turkyilmaz, director-general of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the effort began in 2014 under the project titled “Cleaning Abandoned Fishing Gear from the Seas.''
Citing figures from the work carried out since 2014, Turkyilmaz said that authorities have “scanned 805 million square meters of the marine ecosystem,” an area he described as equivalent to about 112,000 football fields.
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