MARELITT Baltic Reducing the impact of marine litter in the form of - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

MARELITT Baltic Reducing the impact of marine litter in the form of derelict fishing gear in the Baltic Sea Sylwia Migdał, WWF Poland Third Workshop on implementation of the Regional Action Plan on Marine Litter

Presentation today : 1. Status update 2. Time to look ahead Next step: Call open now for ” IBSR extension stage projects”

Status update

HELCOM Regional Action Plan on Marine Litter on best practice in relation to ALDFG and derelict fishing gear Action RS 6 and their removal on best practices to reduce the input of ALDFG from commercial Action RS 7 and recreational fishing Action RS 10 mapping of snagging sites or historic dumping grounds identification of accumulation areas, initiate removal of ghost Action RS 11 nets and their safe management on land on partnership with organizations to encourage implementation Action RS 12 of passive Fishing for Litter schemes

Budget and partners The projects total budget is EUR 3,8 MM. Lead partner: Municipality of Simrishamn, Sweden – Keep the Estonian Sea Tidy – WWF Poland Foundation – WWF Germany – Keep Sweden Tidy – Maritime University of Szczecin – Kolobrzeg Fish Producers Group – Institue of Logistics and Warehousing – Estonian Divers Association

Project aims Reduce the impact of marine litter in the form of derelict fishing gear in the Baltic Sea Improve reception facilities in harbours and environmentally sound waste management. • Develop cost-efficient, safe and environmentally derelict fishing gear cleaning methods. • Produce a handbook on derelict fishing gear methodologies consisting of evaluation of • dragging operations and documentation of lessons learned. Establish a baseline for future cleaning measures and a map over the host areas in the • Baltic Sea and a plan for post-project operation. Increase responsible fishery while developing a code of conduct for the fishing industry. •

Workplans: WP 2 Cleaning, WP 3 Preventing and WP 4 Recycling

Search and retrieval methodology POLAND AND SWEDEN The Polish and Swedish area of the Baltic Sea was divided into squares: • A – typical areas of bottom trawling; B – typical areas of gillnet fishery; and C – areas of mixed fishing effort where both gillnets and bottom trawling might co-exist. Small sampling squares were randomly chosen taking into account the available fishing effort to • be used for searching and retrieval operations. Additionally, fishermen from Poland selected several hot spots areas where, based on their • practical knowledge, the possibility of derelict fishing gears occurrence was the highest. The following areas were excluded from the dragging operations: i) areas where underwater • munition is deposited, ii) Natura 2000, iii) wrecks having confirmed location status, and iv) permanently closed military polygons.

Search and retrieval methodology ESTONIA AND GERMANY • Due to insufficient data related to special distribution of fishing effort in Estonia and Germany, the randomization process was not carried out there. • The identification of retrieval areas in Germany and Estonia was based on information from fishermen and divers regarding expected hot spots areas including wrecks and other underwater hooks.

Search and retrieval actions

Search and retrieval results The results from actions at sea held in 2017: • Estonia: 89 kg (including 77 kg retrieved from wrecks); • Germany: 5572 kg* (including 445 kg retrieved from wrecks); • Poland: 842 kg (plus 2195 kg of various marine litter, such as steel ropes); • Sweden: 4774,2 kg. The results from actions at sea held in 2018 are as follows: • Poland: 1149 kg (plus 1745 kg of other litter, such as anchor, steel rope, ladder). • Other countries: data will be delivered during the following weeks. *The weight of nets retrieved during actions at sea held in Germany covers the results from 2016 and 2017.

Harbour Reception Survey The objective was to assess the readiness, capability and capacity of Baltic Sea fishing harbours to receive, separately collect and sort the derelict fishing gear (DFG) collected from the sea as well as end-of-life fishing gear. The report is available online: https://www.marelittbaltic.eu/document ation/

Environmental Impact Assessment The Environmental Impact Assessment in the form of a report can be used during the planning of retrieval operations to highlight the possible impacts the operation can have on the environment and can help to minimize these impacts. The report is available online: https://www.marelittbaltic.eu/document ation/

Feasibility study Recycling options for DFG retrieved from the sea WWF Germany has carried out recycling trials with DFG retrieved from the German Baltic Sea and the report presenting the results has been created. The report will be available to public on the Marelitt Baltic website: https://www.marelittbaltic.eu/documentation/

Time to look ahead MARELITT Baltic will submit an extension stage project application . Deadline: End of January 2019

”Capacity status” of countries within BSR: • 4 countries (Estonia, Germany, Poland and Sweden) involved in MARELITT Baltic • 2 countries (Denmark and Finland) have started or are starting a national work • 3 countries (Lithuania, Latvia and Russia) has no or very little activities

From a project to a product: Main objective of MARELITT Baltic is to deliver an all-in-one solution to mitigate DFG problem in • Baltic Sea region MARELITT Baltic all-in-one solution is ” Baltic Sea Blueprint ” • Baltic Sea Blueprint includes knowledge and lessons learned on two levels: • Practical level : Detailed reports covering: Sea activities, harbor reception, recycling, prevention Policy level : A Handbook for national authorities for step-by-step guidance of national policy building

Northern region: - a bigger share of of Different fisheries part-time fishing pa = differ eren ent ta target get gro roups - mix ix o of gill llnets and nd e.g. in north farmers are fyke ke-ne nets (traps, fishing during short time pots), no no bottom periods trawlin ing Southern region: Yet not explored: + recreational fishing - full-time fishing + inshore fisheries (IBSR?) - mix ix o of demer ersal trawlin ing and nd gill llnettin ing

STEP - 2: Baltic Sea Blue print ”in practice” Step -2 - Finland - Estonia - Northern Sweden - Inshore fisheries (?) - Recreational fishery - + Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia & Denmark MARELITT Baltic (2016 - 19) - A common methodology - Based on 4 case studies - Estonian case: a window toward the northern dimension of the problem - Result: Baltic Sea Blue print

MARELITT Baltic STEP -2: Baltic Sea Blueprint ” in practice - A draft proposal for the application/plan is based on two approaches: 1) Further development of the Baltic Sea Blueprint to cover northern Baltic Sea + recreational fisheries Suggested involved countries: Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Denmark 2) Lithuania and Latvia are used as testbeds for policy level implementation of Baltic Sea Blueprint Objective could be e.g: A draft national DFG mitigation policy (?) MARELITT Baltic original partners will offer hands-on consultation for authoroties. Lessons learned from ”implementation of Baltic Sea Blueprint” on policy level will be examined and lessons learned will be used to improve the Baltic Sea Blueprint

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