LIFE iSEAS

Title: Knowledge-Based Innovative Solutions to Enhance Adding-Value Mechanisms towards Healthy and Sustainable EU Fisheries

Summary: Discards refer to the practice of dumping overboard dead unwanted fish that are accidentally caught as by-catch during commercial fishing practices. Most conventional fishing operations produce discards (ranging from between 2 and 10% for long-line methods and increasing by as much as 90% for trawling systems). New measures within the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) aim to reduce discards. This will lead to a decrease in the volume of such biomass reaching shore which will effect the operations of land-based facilities that currently utilise the discard biomass.

The main objective of LIFE iSEAS is to promote more sustainable fisheries practices through improving know-how about new approaches to managing discard biomass. This will be achieved through testing new technology (which builds on outcomes from the previous LIFE FAROS project) for automatically monitoring and recording discard material on-board deep-sea and other commercial fishing vessels. The new technology will provide real-time data that can be modelled to help direct fishing activities away from areas and practices that indicate high risks of producing discard biomass.

Benefits will include more effective forms of precision-fishing that improve the commercial quality of catches and lead to more-resource-efficient operations (e.g. fuel and time savings). Mitigating on-shore effects from improved discard management will also form an important part of the project. An ‘Integral Discards Processing and Valorisation Point’ will be established to explore new sustainable options for dealing with the transition process that follows the anticipated increase in precision-fishing at sea.

The project’s main expected results are:

• Significantly improved knowledge about the socio-economic and environmental effects (positive and negative) of measures aimed at reducing discards;
• Successful demonstration (and further calibration of) the iObserver technology to automatically and efficiently provide the data that is needed for improving the management of discards - thereby improving the prospects for more precision-fishing practices;
• Development of data and metadata models plus a complete range of OGC services (WMS, WFS, WCS, WPS) for acquired discards information that can be integrated on a fish discards SDI, satisfying the INSPIRE Directive (2007/2/EC);
• Elaboration of a powerful modelling tool to improve analysis of fish stocks and potential discard risks in different fisheries. This will combine various data inputs in order to improve its efficacy for providing real-time guidance to help boat crews reduce discard volumes;
• Testing of as prototype facility (based at Marín port) to valorise, manage and trade discards that have been landed. Close cooperation between the facility and the fishing crews involved in the project is expected to improve the quality of discard biomass and thus improve its potential for commercial valorisation;
• A detailed study (covering all stakeholders from the Galician fisheries sector) that clarifies the environmental and socio-economic impacts of proposed solutions for discard reduction. This will pay special attention to capacity building for better management of discards and the reduction of discards, particularly, participation in the co-management and community-based management of fisheries.

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