Responsibility measures

Promote the local repair and reuse of nets

Farmer/user responsibility Farmer/user responsibility

Relevant type of aquaculture:

Fish Shellfish

Relevant sea basin:

Mediterranean

Relevant stage:

Prevention and reduction

Related Barriers:

  • The biofouling on material (e.g. aquaculture nets) that remains in the sea for a long time makes the material more fragile since fish are attracted by this organic material and can ingest fibres forming the net

  • The prevention of marine litter should be the base of the circular economy. Currently, gear producers are not considerably involved or interested in this type of approach, making sustainable design, research on alternative materials, etc, not their priority. (This situation will have to change once the Directive EU 2019/904 on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic products on the environment is applied by all European countries).

Related Good Practice:

P&R GP6.2

Reuse of net bags for selling mussels and sacks used for mussel transport from the farmer to the processing companies

Both items are usually in good state, as they are only used for mussel transport from the aquaculture installation to the final consumer or from the farmer to the processing company. Therefore, in case of direct marketing, farmers can request those nets and sacks to be returned once mussels have been removed and, thus, both items can be reused with no extra cost. This is currently done by the Menorcan mussel farmer Muscleres González and the mussel farmers associated to a Spanish PDO organization.