In Reply to: Re: Good news for a change re: gillnet posted by Ross-O on December 31, 2007 at 11:14:30:

I'm a little amazed that you posted "The Real Story" but hugely glad that you did. We all had our little run ins with the net. Thanks for cutting me out of my little snag - I was highly considering leaving my fin at the time. I also had an earlier, nastier, snag I that I never bothered to mention. I think this gill net has been a great learning experience for all of us.

I'm glad to have gotten some "gill net" diving experience. It is a killer like no other that all of us could face, at any time, on any offshore dive. Fortunately, most of the time, we never come face to face with them. (To my knowledge, none of the training agencies offer "Gill Net Surivival" certifications:).) We are all pretty experienced at extricating ourselves from kelp entanglements but these nets are a whole new ball game.

When I think of how many dives California divers do in poor vis, and how many I've done in 1 foot vis, one of these nets could take out a whole group of divers - never to be seen again in the blink of an eye. Just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We had pretty excellent conditions to have an encounter with what turned out to be a HUGE killing machine.

I think it is an example everyone can learn from. You had no idea of the extent of what we would be facing. I see the big picture as 1. These awful things are out there, 2. They are man made indiscriminant killers, 3. As time goes on, there will undoubtedly be an increase in the population of wayward "ghost nets" - and, the prospect of unsuspecting divers getting killed by one will be increasing and the marine by catch that dies in them will be catastrophic 4. What do you do about a problem like this?