On the 12th of April 2015 we arrived at Sail Rock around 10am just like any other day of diving but while dropping anchor we were informed by other divers that fishermen had disgarded nets all over our beautiful dive site.

This is not the first time we have encountered fishing nets on the rock but this was definately a bad case, the south side of Sail Rock was covered in a green fishing net which had tangled itself around the rocks, stagghorn corals and anything else it could wrap around.

We had our daily schedule to keep to so decided to continue with normal dives and start untangling on our safety stops as the majority of the net on the souther side of Sail Rock was between 7 and 3 meters. Once we arrived on our safety stop with 70 bar left we began untangling the net and passing chunks we had taken off up to the surface support divers who were snokelling around helping out. 

Divers from all shops took part in clearing the nets up from the southern side and from batfish pinnacle on the western side of Sail Rock and by the end of the day the rock was virtually net free with minimal damage thanks to the care taken by the divers to retrieve the nets without damaging the corals. All in all we managed to bring up around 5-7kg of net during out safety stops and on the surface interval divers went in to help as well. A sad day for sail rock with the fishermen not thinking about their actions but a great day of divers coming together in one united goal. To keep Sail Rock clean of nets.