The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the  United Nations (FAO) invited MARELITT Baltic to a workshop on marine litter during the Fish Forum 2018 in Rome, Italy. The workshop focused on plastic litter from the fisheries sector. With 40 international participants, the topic raised a keen interest among FAO fisheries representatives, NGOs, scientists as well as fishing harbour managers and fisheries associations.

On the 20–21st of March 2019, the MARELITT Baltic project will host The Final Conferece in Stockholm. For the first time, we will present The Baltic Sea Blueprint – a handbook on how to approach lost and discarded fishing gear in terms of mapping, retrieval, recycling and prevention. More information will soon be available.

When derelict fishing gear (DFG) is retrieved from the sea, the material is highly mixed and contains metal anchors, chains, organic matter, and other marine litter as well as nets, ropes, float and sink lines. So how could retrieved fishing gear be treated to enter the value and recycling chain? And what preparation is necessary for a full recycle scheme? Read more about this in our new released recycling report.

One of the critical challenges of the MARELITT Baltic project is to identify more cost-efficient techniques – enabling more environmentally friendly, smoother and more accurate ways to detect and locate lost fishing gears. One potential way is to use hydro-acoustic surveying, like side-scan sonars. Read more in the new released report!