The Circular Oceans conference on April 18-19, 2018, in Aalesund, Norway, brought together all kinds of parties interested in working with ghost gear. Andrea Stolte presented the recycling trials conducted by WWF Germany as part of the MARELITT Baltic DFG treatment scheme.

Only around half of the surveyed harbours around the Baltic Sea can receive and handle ghost nets and end-of-life fishing gear. For the handling of ghost nets only, the result is even lower. This appears in the MARELITT Baltic harbour reception survey.

In April, the MARELITT Baltic project partner WWF Germany arranged a three-day workshop on the topic “recycling of lost fishing gear”. The workshop was organised in Stralsund, Germany, with participants from all over the world: Peru, Hong Kong, UK, France, Spain, to name a few.

Last week, the MARELITT Baltic partners from Marine Center in Simrishamn municipality, visited a small local company called “Fiskareföreningen Norden”. Sixten Söderberg, founder and owner of the company, informed about an effort to establish a municipal sorting station that can handle several types of plastic waste – including retrieved derelict fishing gear.