GearSearch: Reducing ghost gear and marine plastics pollution

丢失的渔具是一个巨大的环境和经济问题，导致海洋塑料和诱捕海洋动物的“幽灵渔具”的扩散。GearSearch项目创造了一项创新技术来解决这个长期存在的生态和经济问题，帮助渔民在丢失的渔具造成污染之前轻松找到它们。工业渔具约占海洋塑料垃圾的10%。虽然有些渔具被丢弃，但大多数渔具的丢失并非渔民的过错，渔民必须承担更换渔具的经济负担和由此造成的捕鱼机会的损失。英国渔民每年损失超过5%的渔具，损失高达1600万英镑。如果这些浮线被损坏或切断，渔具就会丢失，而造成损失的外部因素，如天气或过往船只，往往会在此过程中移动渔具，从而使问题更加复杂。目前，还没有一个解决方案可以轻松帮助渔民找到他们丢失的渔具。这个项目将与商业渔民一起开发和测试一个名为MyGearTag的声学标签解决方案。它将有三个组成部分：标签设计坚固耐用，符合人体工程学，易于在所有类型的渔具上进行改装，最重要的是，不会干扰捕鱼作业。此外，海洋学传感器在履行其渔具定位职责的同时收集宝贵的海洋学数据。在操作上，MyGearTag将是被动的，直到它接收到一个独特的信号才传输，避免了声音污染。将开发一个智能手机应用程序，将标签分配到特定的齿轮，并提供与标签通信和精确定位其位置的界面。由于每次部署后都会回收渔具和标签，因此船舶也将收集海洋学数据，这些数据可以直接用于船舶或汇总并用于驱动建模工具，以帮助渔民和其他海洋用户。将与商业渔民进行深入的产品设计会议，以确定MyGearTag产品的要求和所需的可用性水平。测试装置将在英国的商业移动的和静态齿轮上开发和试验。这些试验的反馈将为产品的最终设计和规格提供信息，MyGearTag将于2023年上市。

Lost fishing gear is a tremendous environmental and economic problem, leading to a proliferation of ocean plastic and 'ghost-gears' that trap marine fauna. Project GearSearch creates an innovative technology to resolve this longstanding ecological and economic problem, that helps fishermen easily locate their lost gears before they become pollution. Industrial fishing gear accounts for roughly 10% of marine plastic debris. Whilst some gear is dumped, most is lost through no fault of the fishermen, who must bear the economic burden of replacing it and the lost fishing opportunities incurred. UK fishermen lose over 5% of their gear annually at a cost of £16m.Static fishing gears such as traps and nets are set on the seabed and marked with floats. If these floating lines are damaged or cut, the gear becomes lost and external factors such as weather or the passing vessels that cause the loss often move the gear in the process, thus compounding the problem. Presently, there is no solution to easily assist fishermen to find their lost fishing gear.This project will develop and test in conjunction with commercial fishermen an acoustic tag solution called MyGearTag. It will have 3 components: the tag, oceanographic sensors and a smartphone App. The tag design will be robust and ergonomic, making it easy to retrofit on all types of fishing gear and, most importantly, not interfere with the fishing operation. Moreover the oceanographic sensors gather valuable oceanographic data whilst performing its gear location duties. Operationally MyGearTag will be passive and not transmit until it receives a unique signal, avoiding sound pollution. A smartphone App will be developed to allocate the tags to specific gears and provide the interface for communicating with the tags and pinpointing their location. As the gear and tag are recovered after each deployment the vessel will harvest the oceanographic data too and this can be used directly on the vessel or aggregated and used to drive modelling tools to help fishers and other users of our seas and oceans. In-depth product design sessions will be carried out with commercial fishermen to scope the requirement of the MyGearTag product and level of usability required. Test sets will be developed and trialled on commercial mobile and static gears in the UK. Feedback from these trials will inform the final design and specification of the product and MyGearTag will be made available for market in 2023.