Waterhaul

TURNING WASTE

Abandoned fishing gear and nets are the most common and also the most lethal forms of plastic in our ocean.

In a phenomenon known as ‘ghost fishing’, the entangled and trapped marine life will attract more species, resulting in an ongoing loop of catches . As these discarded nets are produced from plastic, they will not degrade, persisting in the ocean to catch and kill marine life indefinitely.

INTO RESOURCE

We founded Waterhaul as frustrated marine conservationists - every winter our beaches were inundated with ghost gear and we were finding lines and offcuts daily. Our pile of collected nets grew and grew (as did our neighbours disapproval of the smell) which motivated us towards a solution. We developed a mechanical recycling solution to process various forms of end-of-life fishing gear, and produced our first pair of Sunglassesin 2018.

The properties which make ghost gear such a threat in our oceans; the size and abundance of net, the quality of the high-strength polymers used, and the urgency to remove the plastic from harms way, all make fishing nets a desirable recycling resource. And as we suspected, fishing nets durable enough to last 500 years in ocean make for super-strong sunglasses frames.