Project description
Advanced technology to reduce megafauna by-catch in the Eastern Central Atlantic
Quantifying, analysing and comprehending by-catch data from all European fishing fleets is crucial for improving fisheries sustainability and conserving marine megafauna. The EU-funded REDUCE project aims to mitigate marine megafauna by-catch and promote sustainable fishery management in the Eastern Central Atlantic Ocean. The project will employ observer programmes, electronic monitoring and machine learning to obtain high-quality data on marine megafauna by-catch. Utilising fine-scale GPS tracking and predictive habitat maps, it will identify by-catch hot spots, factors driving interactions, and political responsibilities. The project will also evaluate mitigation measures and promote collaborative workshops, training sessions and monitoring events, fostering cooperation among scientists, the fishing industry, civil society and policymakers to reduce by-catch in the region.
Objective
REDUCE will unify stakeholder efforts and utilize an interdisciplinary scientific approach to reduce bycatch of marine megafauna and inform sustainable fishery management in the Eastern Central Atlantic Ocean. The diagnosis and integration of bycatch data across all industrial European fleets in the region, linked with fishing effort and the spatiotemporal distribution of the species, will provide a systematic approach to jointly assess and tackle policy challenges. The expansion and improvement of the observer programmes and the advances in electronic monitoring and automated machine learning systems will enable species-specific and high-resolution data of marine megafauna bycatch. Fine-scale GPS tracking of selected species combined with AIS fishery data in concurrent time will allow understanding key drivers of interactions and infer political responsibilities. New fine-scale tracking data of carefully selected species in the region will allow for a better understanding of their abundance and distribution and post-release mortality. Sightings, fishery catches and tracking data on marine megafauna will be combined to provide a step-changes in predictive habitat mapping approaches to understand overlap and bycatch risk from local to basin-scales. The combination of timeseries of sightings, fishery catches, GPS and GLS tracking and capture-mark-recapture studies, will provide an unprecedented view on megafauna hotspots and the risks and impacts of bycatch, boosting marine spatial planning or pelagic waters. Assessment and testing of mitigation measures will identify key approaches to significantly reduce bycatch in the region. Innovative and efficient data handling, sharing and publishing will establish an integrated approach to the bycatch data community. Capacity and cooperation between science, fishery industry and policymakers bordering Eastern Central Atlantic Ocean will be boosted by joint multi-disciplinary workshops, scientific training and monitoring events
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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
08007 Barcelona
Spain