I just got back from Labrador Park
Went to do some coastal cleanup coz Andy said there were 3 large gill nets near the coast
Michelle & I went, together with Robert & Ria


I didnt know the park had already opened
& I thought it's the old one near Pasir Panjang
Explored abit
Surprisingly the shore is kinda barren
Not with a single starfish that we normally see on the shore
& I was kinda surprised that there are gill nets that stretched from one end of the shore to another!
When we went forward to take a look
It had all the sea grass growing on it
Couldnt be too new

& then the cleanup started
We had to cut the nets into smaller pieces so we could drag the heavy piece back to the shore
& also tried to dig the buried part to remove the entire one
Luckily
Not much mud got onto me

Robert & Andy found a gill net with live horse shoe crabs
Which kinda hurts to just hear about it

Gill nets are prohibited fishing gears in some countries
Mainly for those where fisheries are part of their major industry
It has a high rate of by-catch such as turtle & sharks
& thus it had been banned due to its impact to the marine life

I'm not too sure how fisheries work in Singapore
But I guess that since gill nets appear here
Probably the fishing gears are not restricted
However, as much as it affect the marine life
& people like us concerning the environment is very unpleased to see such abandoned nets lying around in shore
Which will lead to ghost fishing
Just as bad as by-catch

Ghost fishing is a kind of 'fishing' where the nets stays there and no one came to pick up what is being caught in the mesh
I guess we collected approximately 50kg of the gill netsTook us real effort to clean only 50% of it
Coz tide was rising real fast
Guess the remaining 50% is needed to be cleared sometime sooner before more creatures get entangled and die
Which means we need more manpower too!

PEOPLE! WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Please kindly squeeze some few hours of your time & save the ocean

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