Leveraging innovation to cleanse our seas and empower fishers

Every year, tonnes of fishing gear end up in the ocean, harming marine life and impacting the fishing sector. The key to change this lies in timely tracking and recover lost fishing gears. This requires collaborative efforts among the fisheries industry, scientists, and NGOs.

Funded by Horizon Europe’s Mission Restore our waters and Oceans and supported by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency, the NETTAG+ project proposes new methods for finding and retrieving lost fishing gear while supporting fishers as guardians and cleaners of the oceans.

When gears are lost in the ocean, fishers can take months to recover them. Water currents can move the gear many miles away, making the recovery almost impossible. This is where the NETTAG+ project steps in. This three-year project works to develop and engineer acoustic tags to attach to fishing gear, providing a sustainable, low-cost, and innovative low-impact solution to improve gear’s mapping, tracking, and recovery.

The project is already closely collaborating with fisheries communities in Portugal, Spain, Croatia, Italy, and Malta, developing the acoustic tags and co-designing a robotic surface system linked with the tags that can be easily monitored via a mobile phone or tablet app.

Drawing inspiration from the collaborative spirit that underpinned its predecessor, the NetTag project, NETTAG+ embarks on a voyage of discovery armed with a trio of solutions designed to prevent marine litter derived from fisheries activities, avoid loss of fishing gears (ALDFG), and consequently, mitigate its harmful impacts on the oceans.

This cooperative approach between diverse communities is expected to contribute to protecting and restoring marine ecosystems and biodiversity, in line with the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 through the solutions to prevent, reduce, and remove ALDFG. NETTAG+ encourages EU fishers to adopt more environmental-friendly fishing methods and work towards developing more sustainable fisheries in ecological, economic, and social terms, contributing also to the EU Common Fisheries Policy and the objectives of the EU Mission Restore our Oceans and Waters by 2030.

For more information, please see the EU factsheet.