Action 35: Waste from the fishing industry and aquaculture
Action Title: To Identify the options to address key waste items from the fishing industry and aquaculture, which could contribute to marine litter, including deposit schemes, voluntary agreements and extended producer responsibility.
Lead Party(ies): France, Belgium and EU, with participation from Portugal
What is the issue?
OSPAR assessments have shown that fishing and aquaculture activities are important sources or marine litter, whether this is fishing equipment such as lost or abandoned fishing gear; or waste from aquaculture farms, including oyster bags, mussels’ nets, various plastics from crates, cones, elastics, plastic baskets etc. There is limited reliable information available on waste from these activities at both an international and national level.
What has OSPAR Done?
Under this action the focus was on drawing on experience across the OSPAR region to better understand current practices for the management of plastic waste items. The scoping study was published by OSPAR in 2019 and has supported further progress of other RAP actions, such as Action 36 on best practice for managing marine litter in the fishing industry.
Final outputs and published reports
ACTION COMPLETED
Information on current practice was gathered from OSPAR CPs through a questionnaire. The results were presented in a scoping document, which was published in 2019.
