Lead organization: Matís
Duration: 2025-2029
ICES contacts:
Caecilia Managò, Professional Project Officer
Harald Hasler-Sheetal, Science Department Professional Officer
Through a holistic approach, MarineGuardian will provide impact-driven solutions to reduce fisheries’ environmental impacts on marine species and habitats.
Current solutions for more sustainable fisheries exist but are fragmented and often lack real-time actionable insights for fishers and policy makers. MarineGuardian will advance tools, technologies, operational strategies, and enhance knowledge to accelerate the transition towards sustainable and economically viable fisheries.
The project will deliver:
- innovative technologies to reduce and prevent incidental catches of sensitive species and juveniles
- best practice guidelines for reduced discard and damage to catch
- decision support systems for effective mitigation measures to protect sensitive marine ecosystems, whilst optimising fishing operation
- new methods for data sharing in seafood value chains to ease corporate sustainability reporting and ecolabelling processes
- a roadmap for sustainable fisheries will be drawn-up to demonstrate scalability and replicability of the solutions in line with the Mission Ocean objectives.
These objectives will be co-developed with fishers, management authorities, and policy makers, tested in six case studies to demonstrate their feasibility and ensure long term viability of the European seafood sector.
Concept of MarineGuardian from evaluation (PESTEL) to delivery and impact.
ICES role: ICES will provide expertise on maximizing impact, knowledge transfer, and policy integration. ICES will also facilitate PESTEL analyses of Key Exploitable Results (KERs) in relation to the Theory of Change (TOC), to foster application, uptake and impact of MarineGuardian Outputs, develop science-policy briefs, position papers, and recommendations, and facilitate capacity building and knowledge transfer. This work will be done in close collaboration and synergy with WGING.
