Horizon NETTAG+.
Horizon NETTAG+ project aims to reduce and prevent marine litter derived from fisheries by working directly with fishers through an integrative preventive approach including reducing lost gear by using new technologies (acoustic localisation system) that help fishermen to locate and recover lost gear and promoting better practices on the management of fishing waste through awareness raising actions organised by fishers’ associations for fishermen.
The project is in line with the previous project NetTag and intends to:
- Upscale the technological acoustic solution to locate and recover fishing gears in case of loss, and thus preventing lost gear.
- Capitalise the key role fishers have on marine litter (including fishing activities litter) reduction/prevention by promoting awareness actions for best practices on-board and off-board regarding litter management.
- A third solution will be developed to detect and remove lost gear, cleaning hotspots and promoting recovery of impacted environments.
These three solutions are focused in three main areas of actions:
PREVENT – Fishers as guardians of the ocean. Awareness actions to promote best practices on board regarding the management of litter, including the litter produced on- board and the litter passively caught by the gears. Capitalise the role of fishers in cleaning the ocean and providing a service for free for all of us.
AVOID – Fishing gears location with acoustic tags. Improving and upscaling the acoustic tags already developed with important features like small size, low cost and the capacity to be silent always unless an emitter is actuated. It is intended to upgrade the robotic system to search and localise the tags with improved autonomy and increased search area.
MITIGATE – Detection and removal of ghost fishing nets (Map, Track and Recover). This solution does not come from the previous project NetTag, so it will focus on the development of robotic tools for acoustic advanced techniques to develop a system able to detect abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gears (ALDFGs) on a robotic platform.
