At its core, the relationship between divers and fishers is key when it comes to the global fight against ghost gear. Without communication and cooperation, the cycle of dumping and retrieving is bottomless.

Two figures leading the cause in forging those connections, building trust between the two communities and innovating new approaches to lost and damaged fishing gear are Lefteris Arapakis, a UN Young Champion of the Earth and founder of Enaleia, and Pascal van Erp, a leading rescue diver and founder of Ghost Diving.

In this web lab, we unpack the ghost gear crisis with these eco heroes and connect with members of the fishing community about their fights to ensure that oceans are safe from this waste.

Monday, March 15th, 5pm GMT
Ghost Gear: From Retrieval to Root Cause

About Gelareh Darabi

Gelareh is an award-winning, Canadian-British-Iranian journalist and documentary filmmaker. She is a featured science and environment correspondent with National Geographic Channel and AJ+. Over the past decade, Gelareh has reported across six continents, in over 20 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gelareh has reported on the ground on major environmental crises such as deforestation in the Amazon and the Australia bush fires.

About Lefteris Arapakis
Co-founder, Enaleia

Lefteris is a social entrepreneur and a public speaker. He is a graduate of Athens University of Economics and Business. Lefteris is the co-founder and director of Enaleia, a social enterprise with a vision to make the marine ecosystem sustainable. Enaleia has created the first fishing school in Greece, while educating hundreds of fishermen in sustainable fishing. Enaleia has also launched Mediterannean CleanUp, through which 120 fishermen are cleaning 5.000 kilos of marine plastic every month.The collected marine plastic is send for recycling and the collected nets are send for upcycling. He is an Angelopoulos-Clinton Fellow, a TEDx Speaker, a Robert Bosch Alumnus and an Ashoka Changemaker.

About Pascal van Erp
Founder, Ghost Diving

Pascal van Erp is a GUE trained technical diver with a strong preference for wreck diving. He made hundreds of dives all over the world. During these dives, he encountered lost and abandoned fishing gear and the sad and severe consequences for life under water. Since he co-founder the first Dutch North Sea clean-up project in 2009 he became driven by the removal of lost gear in the North Sea. Based on his experience and specific vision on diving operations related to environmental issues, Pascal decided in 2012 to dedicate his diving exclusively to environmental protection and started the Ghost Diving Foundation — an international non-profit executed by volunteer technical divers which initiates, supports and promotes lost fishing gear removal initiatives. Nowadays they run lost fishing gear survey and removal projects in the North Sea, Adriatic Sea, Aegean Sea, Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Caspian Sea, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and Scapa Flow. Since 2013, he is Diving & Maritime Manager of the Healthy Seas organisation.

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