Good practice:

Fish smarter- sustainable fishing, ocean clean – ups, environmental awareness, and prevention.

The main objective of the practice is to solve 2 correlated problems: 1. reduction of fish stock & plastic pollutions of the ocean. Enaleia focus is ocean waste clean-ups and for the first time in Greece, there is a fishing school and fishermen clean the sea. Regarding ocean clean–up, Enaleia in collaboration with fishing boats clean the bottom of the sea from plastic waste in an efficient way. In the framework of prevention, professional fishermen in 21 ports around Greece and Italy hand Enaleia over their nets, to prevent them from ending up in the sea or landfills and instead are utilized to create products by recycling or upcycling. In collaboration with Healthy Seas, Enaleia created co-branded socks with the ghost nets we clean from the sea. Regarding the clean seas campaign and the World Environment Day 2021 and the World Oceans Day 2021, Enaleia in collaboration with the Port Secretariat of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs & Insular implemented actions in 8 locations throughout Greece with the aim of cleaning ports and land port areas from marine litter. Enaleia has built a strong network that includes all the relevant stakeholders to tackle the marine pollution and overfishing problems, from local fishing communities to recycling/upcycling partner. The initiative of the “Clean Seas Campaign” has raised awareness to Municipalities with inter- municipal port funds by informing and giving them the chance for cleaning up from waste the ports and the land port areas.

Some of the Enaleia’s activities are funded by the Cyclades – Preservation Fund and Costas M. Lemos Foundation. However, there is no available information about the cost.

The following results emerged: more than 179 fishermen were trained in sustainable fishing. From October 2018 till May 2019 10 fishing boats cleaned in total 16 tons of marine litter, from which 83% was plastic. Recycling increase -20.000kg of fishing nets were upcycled-. From October 2019 till May 2020, 40 fishing vessels cleaned in total 42.9 tons of marine litter. From October 2020 till May 2021 229 fishing vessels cleaned in total 14 tons of marine litter.

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The practice addresses a need which is common across the European coastal cities. It could be easily transferred as it is a low – cost practice. The lessons about sustainable tourism and environmental raise awareness to the fishermen could be implemented virtually. The engagement of the professional fishermen to ocean clean- ups could be enhanced with future benefits. Therefore, in case the initiative could be combined with financial benefits through funding, fishermen response could be massively increased with low implementation risk.