MarineGuardian will, through a holistic approach, provide impact-driven solutions to reduce fisheries´ environmental impacts on marine species and habitats in line with the Common Fisheries Policy, Marine Action Plan, EU 2030 Biodiversity Strategy and Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The seafood sector contributes to global food security, but is largely unsustainable, with 38% of fish stocks overexploited and significant ecological implications. 79% of EU’s coastal seabed habitats are disrupted, and a quarter lost, mainly due to intense bottom trawling. Current solutions for more sustainable fisheries exist but are fragmented and often lack real-time actionable insights for fishers and policymakers. MarineGuardian will advance tools, technologies and operational strategies, and enhance knowledge to accelerate the transition towards sustainable and economically viable fisheries. The project will deliver: 1) innovative technologies to reduce and prevent incidental catches of sensitive species and juveniles, 2) best practice guidelines for reduced discard and damage to catch, 3) decision support systems for effective mitigation measures to protect sensitive marine ecosystems, whilst optimising fishing operations, 4) new methods for data sharing in seafood value chains to ease corporate sustainability reporting and ecolabelling processes. These will be co-developed with fishers, management authorities, and policy makers, tested in 6 case studies to demonstrate their feasibility and ensure long term viability of the European seafood sector. A roadmap for sustainable fisheries will be drawn-up to demonstrate scalability and replicability of the solutions in line with the Mission Ocean objectives. The consortium holds the cross-cutting knowledge and expertise within private and research sectors from across the Atlantic and Arctic Sea basin, needed to successfully reach the project’s objectives and have a long-lasting impact on the seafood sector and marine environment.

The current exploitation of the aquatic resources is hampered by inefficiency as up to 70 % end up as low-value products or waste, which is unsustainable considering the rising populations. In order to utilise this currently poorly exploited biomass for higher value purposes, provision of proper logistics and infrastructure to ensure high quality of side-streams for a prolonged window of time is essential. Also promising technologies currently available at lab level need to be adapted to industrial scale and integrated into a biorefinery approach. The objective of the WASEABI project is to solve challenges that prevents more sound exploitation of the aquatic resources. This will be obtained by developing, sorting technologies, storage solutions and decision tools that will secure an efficient, sustainable supply system for by-catches, as well as for solid and liquid side-streams from aquaculture, fisheries and the aquatic processing industries to biorefining operations. This will result in valorisation of these raw materials into marketable products. By addressing side-streams from six different raw materials emerging from typical aquaculture, fisheries and aquatic processing industries in Europe, WASEABI will take a whole chain perspective to succeed with high quality production of: i) bioactive peptides for nutraceutical, food and feed applications, ii) protein-based food ingredients, iii) savoury ingredients and mineral supplements for food and feed. WASEABI will also construct biorefining approaches and validate selected solutions in pilot scale at the premises of participating companies. The commercial potential of the produced ingredients will be evaluated and specific environmental, economic and social impacts of the proposed solutions will be quantified. Several of the developed technologies will be transferable across seafood companies. WASEABI addresses all the objectives described for BBI 2018. SO1.R1.