Circular solutions for fishing gears

SEARCULAR aims at reducing the amount of marine litter and microplastic from the most relevant European fishery contributors (demersal trawlers, demersal seiners, tropical tuna purse seiners) and to introduce circular economy practices within the fishing sector value chain including ports, by fostering behavioural change.

SEARCULAR will do this by developing/testing/validating 4 close-to-market sustainable and circular solutions (TRL7-9).

Three of the solutions are related to the use of more sustainable materials as alternatives to the traditional non-circular plastic used in fishing gears: Solution#1 proposes a dolly rope made of recycled polyamide (rPA) from discarded fishing nets (thus it is focused on circularity and more durable materials), Solution#2 is based on certified marine-biodegradable materials for demersal seine ropes (the focus is on less impact gears), Solution#3 represents an eco-designed biodegradable drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (dFADs) used by tropical tuna purse seine fishery.

And Solution#4 proposes an End-of-Life (EOL) fishing gears solution for ports by promoting a replicable management system that enables the pyrolysis of EOL fishing gears for a plastic2plastic application.

The 4 solutions will be tested under real conditions: onboard commercial vessels (Solutions 1-3) and for the Basque country region (Solution 4), and they will be validated by stakeholders. Therefore, SEARCULAR solutions eliminate waste generated from fishing gears, circulate materials and regenerate nature.