UPY 2025

UPY  Marine Conservation - Runner Up
'The yellow candy'
Pasquale Vassallo

During one of my trips to the sea, I noticed a strong presence of these yellow nets closed like "candy". I could not understand their purpose. In the following days, with the help of some local fishermen, I discovered that the candy is the heart of a trap. It is filled with dead fish and inserted into another net. Thanks to the smell of the remains of dead fish, it attracts some small molluscs - to be precise Nassarius mutabilis - that once they enter the trap they are unable to get out. Once the contents of the trap have been recovered, the candy is often abandoned in the sea, causing plastic pollution and, as visible in the shot, a trap for other organisms.

Judge's comment: A physically small example of 'ghost fishing' where discarded plastic which takes hundreds of years to break down carries on catching and entrapping marine life.
- Martin Edge