Your contribution will be spent on (trapping)material, medication, and other costs of the actions at sea.

Detached pieces of fishing net and fish lines are the main culprits and cause the most entanglements. But other marine litter can also cause seals to get tangled up. Think of example of strips that are used to keep bundles together and other packaging material.

The three Dutch seal rescue centres, Ecomare, Seal Centre Pieterburen and A Seal, want to help the entangled seals. They are already doing so, when such a marine litter victim is found on the beach. What’s new is that together they can now actually start to do this at sea. That’s why they’ve set up the Seal Response Team.

The Seal Response Team consists of specially trained animal caretakers and veterinarians. The aim is to sail out several times a year to places where entangled seals have been seen before and to free these animals. An entangled seal’s mobility is reduced, making it more likely to be recovered around the site of the report.

Of course, preventing entanglement is best. Unfortunately, fishing nets occasionally snag on an underwater object and break the net in the process. Such accidents cause ‘ghost nets’ in the sea. Fishermen who fish up a piece of net and cleanup workers remove them from the system again. Still, plenty of litter remains in the sea, resulting in entanglement victims.