10017127GearSearch: Reducing ghost gear and marine plastics pollutionClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKLost 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.