Mysterious plastic netting found in water

Environmentalists have been left baffled after a curious plastic contraption showed up on Bermuda’s shores.

The white, net-like object was found in the waters of St David’s, near the Black Horse, earlier this week.

Local experts now plan to send images of the discovery to a US expert in a bid to find out what exactly it is and where it has come from.

Some have suggested the find, which is made of tendrils of plastic cling film bound by a nylon rope, could have been used in the recovery of a space vehicles from the ocean.

Judi Clee, a member of the Bermuda Marine Debris Taskforce, told the Bermuda Sun: “We really have no idea what it is at the moment.

“We will look to send images to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired oceanographer, who is a world renowned expert in this field.

“He has previously helped us trace a number of logs that turned up on our shores, and also famously worked on a case where rubber ducks started turning up on beaches elsewhere in the world.

“Kurt is always our first port of call in these kind of cases and we will have to wait and see if he can help us.

“What this find does highlight is the horrific kind of plastic debris there is in our oceans and what a hazard it is to our marine life.”

The discovery was made by Alan and Vanese Gordon as they trawled the waters of St David’s for plastic rubbish on Tuesday evening.

And it has sparked further concern about the amount of plastic pollution being dumped into the oceans.

BEST Chairman, Stuart Hayward, said: “The situation should serve to remind us that we can never throw anything “away” — there is no such place as away.

“Everything we get when we buy something adds to our disposal issues, that includes all the packaging, the container and the item itself.

“At one time in Bermuda we used to “take de trash to de pawnd”.

“At first, our waste used to sink out of sight in the various ponds where we dumped it.

“Eventually we filled up several ponds around the island, and filled up Pembroke Marsh so full that we created a waste mountain.

“While it may take us a bit longer to fill up the oceans, we are seeing the first signs — rafts of floating waste, mostly plastic, that choke marine life and pollute our beaches, materially and aesthetically.

“We humans need to begin viewing the stuff that washes up on our shores as if nature were holding up a mirror for us to see ourselves.” n