The Biodiversity Foundation and the Sub-Directorate General for the Protection of the Sea of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge have initiated a series of actions to protect and manage the seabed of the Natura 2000 Network against the effects caused by marine litter.

These actions, called INTEMARES-Clean Fishing Grounds and INTEMARES-Lost Arts, will be carried out over the next two years and will be coordinated by the Zero Discharges and Man and Territory associations, respectively. The first organization will work to generate a national scheme with common criteria for passive fishing of marine litter in our country. It is intended that this document of general criteria will serve as a reference for future actions and will be agreed with all the agents involved, including administrations, port authorities, fishing organisations, technicians and social agents, to guarantee the coherence of the actions that could be implemented in the future.

In addition, a national database on objects removed in fishing activities will be created, which will improve knowledge of the objects found and work on their origin in order to comply with international regulations on the subject.

A COMMON INVENTORY OF MARINE LITTER

The Man and Territory Association, for its part, will coordinate the creation of a new national action protocol that will allow homogenizing how the utensils used for professional and recreational fishing in the different marine demarcations of Spain and that can be lost involuntarily during the development of these activities would be inventoried, located, evaluated and, where appropriate, extracted and managed .

This action also includes demonstration actions in the territory for which the different actors involved in the management of these materials will participate, such as fishermen, the Guardia Civil maritime service, Maritime Rescue, recreational and professional diving, diving insurers, conservators and researchers who are experts in marine biodiversity. Thus, an attempt will be made to generate consensual work guidelines, as well as a network of collaborating entities so that the management of these elements is as efficient, safe and responsible as possible.

EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF PROTECTED AREAS

The LIFE INTEMARES project advances towards the objective of achieving an effective management of the marine areas of the Natura 2000 Network, with the active participation of the sectors involved and with research as basic tools.

The Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge coordinates the project. The ministry itself, through the Directorate-General for Biodiversity, Forests and Desertification; the Regional Government of Andalusia, through the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development, as well as the Environment and Water Agency; the Spanish Institute of Oceanography; AZTI; the University of Alicante; the Polytechnic University of Valencia; the Spanish Fisheries Confederation, SEO/BirdLife and WWF-Spain. It is supported by the LIFE Program of the European Union.