May 1, 2026 — Worn-out commercial fishing nets and lines from America’s Pacific Northwest are getting a new life protecting soldiers and civilians in Ukraine from exploding Russian drones.
These nets are hung over doorways and windows to entangle the drones before they can hit a target and explode.
On Wednesday, April 22, Nicole Baker of Net Your Problem, an Alaska-based maritime recycling firm, was in Newport, Ore., overseeing the loading of 29,000 pounds of worn-out trawl, gill, and seine nets and crab line from harvesters into a 40-foot container headed for Ukraine. The load included 19 trawl nets, four bags of seine web, one bag of gillnet web, and three bags of line.
Net Your Problem got involved last year when contacted by a Boston-based venture capital and private equity firm looking for commercial fishing nets to send to Ukraine. Nets from Net Your Problem became part of the firm’s first container load of nets to Ukraine.
“I could never have imagined this is what would happen to these nets, and I can’t think of a more fulfilling way to use them,” Baker said. “It’s literally saving people’s lives.
“My sister is an ICU cardiac nurse, and she saves people’s lives. Now I do too,” she said.
The venture capital firm, Ground Squirrel Ventures, is a network of angel and seed stage investors founded by Eric Klose in 2018.