How to deal with the problem of marine litter and ghost nets?

This was the question posed by Dr. Vanessa Moschino of the Institute of Marine Sciences (CNR-ISMAR) in Venice to the students of three classes of the Liceo Einstein in Piove di Sacco (PD) during an on-line seminar held on April 21st. Starting from the analysis of the marine litter issue and its impacts on both the environment and human activities, Dr. Moschino told the students about the challenges faced by the international scientific community, presenting three projects coordinated by the Institute of Marine Sciences which are exploring and testing eco-sustainable solutions to reduce the amounts and the impacts of marine litter. In particular, the management strategies to prevent and mitigate the abandonment of fishing gear at sea developed within the GHOST project, as well as the results obtained within the marGnet project leading to the realisation of a prototype for the chemical recycling of marine litter (https://www.margnet.eu/it/il-progetto/) were presented to the students.

Finally, it was the occasion to present a new and ambitious project which started in January 2021, called MAELSTROM, whose main aim is to develop new technologies to identify and remove marine litter from seas and rivers through the use of automated systems, in order to proceed to their recycling and to marketize the recycled products (https://www.maelstrom-h2020.eu/).