Freedivers on Breath-Hold Have Pulled 1.3 Million Pounds of Ghost Nets Off Hawaii's Remote Reefs

Papahanaumokuakea, a national marine sanctuary and marine national monument, stretches about 1,200 miles northwest of the main islands. Expeditions take several days by vessel to reach it. PMDP estimates that around 200,000 pounds of new debris arrives each year, roughly 115,000 pounds of it as nets on shallow reefs and 85,000 pounds along shorelines, so the campaign's name describes the problem: catch up on the backlog, then keep up with the inflow.

What the 2026 season brought home

The final 2026 expedition left Honolulu on 14 September and worked Kamole, Kapou, Manawai and Holaniku, returning with about 47,000 pounds, including 28,730 pounds of derelict nets from reefs, 15,290 pounds of nets from shorelines and nearly 3,000 pounds of shoreline plastics, Hawaii News Now reported in October. Crews freed five entangled green sea turtles on that trip; since 2020 the project counts 20 turtles and three Hawaiian monk seals rescued. Operations ended a day early as Hurricane Nolo moved through.

About 80 percent of everything recovered is abandoned fishing gear. The heaviest single net the team has lifted weighed more than 23,000 pounds. Recovered nets go to Honolulu, where PMDP works with partners including Hawaii Pacific University's Center for Marine Debris Research and the city's H-POWER waste-to-energy plant, and is testing recycling into plastic lumber and 3D-printing filament.

What happens after the five-year campaign

James Morioka, PMDP's executive director, who has spent more than 500 days in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands since 2011, is now looking for new funding and partners to keep large-scale removal going, with paid positions advertised from January 2027. The group is also testing better cutting tools, flotation and towing systems, mechanical lifting gear, aerial surveys and diver propulsion vehicles, and wants to measure success by entanglements prevented and reef damage avoided, not pounds alone. In September it ran the first live broadcast from a remote reef in the monument, reaching more than 300 participants, most of them Hawaii students.

This article is journalism, not instruction: freediving, even in shallow water, carries real risks, including shallow water blackout, and training belongs with a certified instructor and agency. Nets will keep arriving on the current whatever happens to PMDP's budget; the question for 2027 is whether the breath-hold crews will be there to meet them.