Biodegradable fishing nets can save thousands of marine life
Last reviewed: 20.11.2021
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Because of fishing nets, lost or abandoned as a result of severe damage, hundreds of dolphins and other marine inhabitants are killed. Stuck in the net, the mammal can not come to the surface and dies from lack of air for a long and painful death.
Alejandro Plasencia, a student engineer, has developed a special biodegradable material for fishing nets, as well as a special marker that will help fishermen find their network if necessary and retrieve it. As stated by Alejandro himself, his idea will help prevent thousands of deaths of marine animals.
Until the plastic network lost or left in the sea breaks up into multiple remains that, by the way, will continue to cause irreparable harm to the environment, it will become a real trap for marine life and will bring painful death to many mammals, for example, sea lions or dolphins.
Plastic is known to release toxic substances that many marine organisms take for food and absorb.
Plasencia suggested, as an alternative, to use the materials created by him, both individually and together, which would help solve environmental problems.
First of all, orange and yellow color markers with a built-in chip can be attached to the currently used networks. Thanks to the chip that reads the special application, fishermen will be able to track, in a timely manner, retrieve and restore their networks if necessary, or fishermen can designate the network as lost, informing the special marine protection organizations that will retrieve the unnecessary network.
As the developer himself says, he tried to find a technology that was both inexpensive and small in size, and could easily merge with the system and significantly change the current ecological situation.
According to Alejandro, he was inspired by a symbiosis in nature, for example, fish-stickers that attach to sharks and feed on parasites, food debris, etc.
Also, Plasencia suggested using the new Remora networks, the plastic of which will have a special component that makes it biodegradable and ecologically safe, in other words, a lost or damaged network will not be a threat to either marine animals or the environment.
As the developer noted, the death of thousands of marine animals due to fishing nets should become a global problem and its project is specifically designed for the fishing industry, where one of the components of fishermen's profit will be sustainability. Now, to create a fishing net, huge resources are required: in Spanish factories, pre-treated polymers are bound in a network of different density, then differently sized pieces of networks are transported closer to the harbor, where fishing boats and boats are stopped for technical needs. In the harbor all parts of the networks are sewn by hand with special plastic needles. But, according to Alejandro Plasencia, it will take half the costs to create a fishing net, in addition, the ecological situation will significantly improve.
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