STARFISH 4.0 SSF

STARFISH 4.0 (Demonstration of a solar-powered Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) and digital tools for the safety of artisanal fishermen and sustainable management of small-scale fisheries) is a 2-year project (2020-2021), funded by the European Commission’s European Maritime and Fisheries Fund as part of its Sustainable Blue Economy grant. Small-scale fisheries play an important role in the European Union from a biological, economic and social perspective, amounting to 85% of all fishing vessels. But SSF are not currently monitored as large, industrial fishing vessels are; we do not know where they fish, nor how much, which creates significant challenges for sustainable resource management. The STARFISH 4.0 project demo trials a tracking system for small-scale fishers in real operational conditions at sea. The general goal is to refine the product through user feedback and improve stakeholder engagement in order to speed up market uptake by one year after the end of the project.