Ghost Diving · Greece

Ghost gear is fishing equipment that has been abandoned or lost and snags on wrecks and reefs. It goes on catching there — fish, turtles, anything that gets tangled — for years. Recovery is the only way to stop it.

I filmed for a week, several dives a day, while a team cut nets free and brought them up. Commissioned by Healthy Seas.

Filming while everything goes up

This is the hardest kind of work I do, and not for the reason you would expect.

A recovery is not a static subject. There is cutting, lift bags go on, and then things start rising — sometimes suddenly. Your own safety is the first thing on your mind down there, not your shot.

And then the visibility. The moment a net comes free, a cloud comes with it. From good visibility to nothing in seconds. What you do not have at that moment, you will not get on that dive.

So your position decides everything. You have to be in the right place at the right moment, and that moment does not announce itself. Too close and you are in the team’s way — or worse. Too far and you have nothing.

Why this work counts

Documenting a recovery as it happens is a different thing from producing footage of one afterwards. What you see is the actual work: people hanging off a net with cutting tools at depth, surrounded by years of accumulated mess.

That convinces in a way a tidy reconstruction never does.