GearSearch: Reducing ghost gear and marine plastics pollution

渔具丢失是一个巨大的环境和经济问题，导致海洋塑料和“幽灵渔具”的扩散，这些渔具困住了海洋动物。齿轮搜索项目创造了一种创新的技术来解决这个长期存在的生态和经济问题，帮助渔民在丢失的齿轮成为污染之前轻松找到它们。工业渔具约占海洋塑料垃圾的10%。虽然有些渔具被倾倒，但大多数渔具的损失并不是渔民的过错，他们必须承担更换渔具的经济负担，以及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，造成1600万英镑的损失。静态渔具，如陷阱和渔网，设置在海床上，并标有漂浮物。如果这些浮绳被损坏或切断，齿轮就会丢失，而导致丢失的外部因素，如天气或过往船只，往往会在此过程中移动齿轮，从而使问题复杂化。目前，还没有解决方案可以轻松地帮助渔民找到他们丢失的渔具。该项目将与商业渔民一起开发和测试一种名为MyGearTag的声学标签解决方案。它将由3个部分组成：标签、海洋传感器和智能手机应用程序。标签设计坚固耐用，符合人体工程学，可以很容易地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，海洋传感器在履行其齿轮定位职责的同时收集有价值的海洋数据。在操作上，MyGearTag将是被动的，在接收到唯一的信号之前不会发射，从而避免了声音污染。将开发一款智能手机应用程序，将标签分配到特定的齿轮上，并提供与标签通信和精确定位的接口。每次部署后，随着设备和标签的回收，船只也将收集海洋数据，这些数据可以直接在船上使用，也可以汇总并用于驱动建模工具，以帮助渔民和海洋的其他用户。将与商业渔民进行深入的产品设计会议，以确定MyGearTag产品的需求范围和所需的可用性水平。测试装置将在英国的商业移动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.