Waterhaul

Every surf. Every dive. The most common item on every beach clean. In 2018, Waterhaul's founder, Harry Dennis, was working as marine scientist for a charity project engaging community action on plastic pollution. He'd been fortunate to travel the world for both research and adventure. However, the bright green strands of ghost gear that were a ubiquitous sight on every shoreline, from the Arctic Circle to the Coral Triangle developed a frustration.  

A key moment was the realisation that all of the properties which make lost fishing gear such a problem; its abundance, its strength and durability, and its entanglement impacts, combine to make it both an excellent resource as a material and a priority target to remove from the ocean. After many recycling trials, Waterhaul was founded in 2018, repurposing the fisheries term 'waterhaul' meaning an empty catch. Unlike it's original negative connotations, for us, hauling an empty net from the ocean is a success core to our manifesto. 

Our activities are anchored in purpose. As a social-enterprise, we exist to deliver our mission; to tackle ghost gear in oceans by transforming waste to valued resource. After months of design trials, errors and material failures, we finally produced our first functional prototype in November 2018.