The Olive Ridley Project

www.oliveridleyproject.org

Ghost Nets are fishing nets that have been lost, abandoned or discarded. For an animal, entanglement can lead to exhaustion, starvation, injury, and eventually death.  Discarded nets are often taken by oceanic currents and travel huge distances. This means that they can have detrimental effects far from from their original point of entry into the water.

The Olive Ridley Project is trying to conquer the problem of ghost nets in the Indian Ocean. Based in the Maldives, the NGO trains volunteers and citizen scientists how to rescue wildlife, remove nets, and collect valuable information from the entanglements, which can allow us to trace the nets back to their origin.

We aim to mitigate the problem by:
-Educating Indian Ocean residents on the consequences and dangers of ghost nets and how they can be prevented.

-Actively searching for ghost nets and training volunteers to remove them and rescue marine wildlife. Workshops are currently happening in the Maldives, Pakistan, and Oman and planned for other Indian Ocean countries in 2016-7.

-Rehabilitating injured sea turtles and tracking them via satellite tags after release to gain more information about their movements.

-Collaboring with the Global Ghost Gear Initiative to collect information on all ghost nets found in the Indian Ocean in order to determine the origin of the nets.

-Developing ways to recycle and reuse end-of-life fishing gear.

The Olive Ridley Project needs your support to help us keep the Indian Ocean ghost net-free and safer for marine wildlife. Please support our projects.

Your donations will go towards:

-Ghost net removal workshops and community education programs for local fishermen  in several Indian Ocean countries. The team will develop a photographic atlas of all fishing gear used and clean up local dive sites.

-Boat hire to search for ghost nets in the Maldives and rescue marine wildlife.

-Hiring Community Outreach Officers 

-Allowing ORP staff to focus full time on ghost net removal in the Indian Ocean.


Learn more at www.oliveridleyproject.org