Near two
dugong feeding trails, we come across an abandoned driftnet at Chek Jawa.
Fortunately, the net is short and old.
We were on a TeamSeagrass trip with Len and Rudi of Seagrass-Watch. So we all got down to remove the net. Here's Alan and Karen of Ubin NParks at work on the net.
The net looks rather old and is well twisted. So we thought no animals were trapped in it.
But Alan spots this small 5cm wide Stone crab caught in the net! It was still alive. Fortunately, Wei Ling was there to patiently and gently remove all the net stuck among its many legs. We released it in the seagrasses.
The net made of woven fibres (not monofilament) was about 10m long when totally unwound. The mesh size was about 4cm.
We just removed an abandoned net in around the same area in
January 2013. We also saw a fisherman lay a very long driftnet inside the Chek Jawa lagoon in
February 2013.
We sent the photos of the fisherman to Alan who sent them to the Police
Coast Guard for action as the
Chek Jawa area is off limits.
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