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Circular solutions for fishing gears

Project description

Four solutions to eliminate fishing waste

Our oceans are drowning in marine litter and microplastics, a crisis exacerbated by fishery contributors like demersal trawlers, demersal seiners, and tropical tuna purse seiners. As these industries persist with traditional non-circular plastic fishing gear, our waters suffer, and ecosystems pay the price. With this in mind, the EU-funded SEARCULAR project will develop and test four sustainable and circular solutions. The first involves dolly ropes made from recycled polyamide (rPA), sourced from discarded fishing nets. The second incorporates certified marine-biodegradable materials for demersal seine ropes. The third presents eco-designed biodegradable drifting fish aggregating devices, designed for tropical tuna purse seine fisheries. The fourth proposes an innovative end-of-life fishing gear management system in ports.

Objective

"SEARCULAR aims at reducing the amount of marine litter and microplastic from the most relevant European fishery contributors (demersal trawlers, demersal seiners, tropical tuna purse seiners) and to introduce circular economy practices within the fishing sector value chain including ports, by fostering behavioural change. SEARCULAR will do this by developing/testing/validating 4 close-to-market sustainable and circular solutions (TRL7-9). Three of the solutions are related to the use of more sustainable materials as alternatives to the traditional non-circular plastic used in fishing gears: Solution#1 proposes a dolly rope made of recycled polyamide (rPA) from discarded fishing nets (thus it is focused on circularity and more durable materials), Solution#2 is based on certified marine-biodegradable materials for demersal seine ropes (the focus is on less impact gears), Solution#3 represents an eco-designed biodegradable drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (dFADs) used by tropical tuna purse seine fishery. And Solution#4 proposes an End-of-Life (EOL) fishing gears solution for ports by promoting a replicable management system that enables the pyrolysis of EOL fishing gears for a plastic2plastic application. The 4 solutions will be tested under real conditions: onboard commercial vessels (Solutions 1-3) and for the Basque country region (Solution 4), and they will be validated by stakeholders. Therefore, SEARCULAR solutions eliminate waste generated from fishing gears, circulate materials and regenerate nature."

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HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MISS-2022-OCEAN-01

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Coordinator

FUNDACION AZTI - AZTI FUNDAZIOA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 766 852,50
Address
TXATXARRAMENDI UGARTEA Z/G
48395 SUKARRIETA
Spain

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Region
Noreste País Vasco Bizkaia
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 766 852,50

Participants (8)

Partners (2)

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