The Technological Centre of Marine Affairs and its partners in the LIFEiSEAS project presented in Marín, Galicia, the latest advances of this European initiative in the management and valorization of discards. They did so with a demonstration of the operation of the pilot plant that processes and valorizes unwanted catches and fishing byproducts not destined for human consumption.
The plant, located in Marin fish market, produces compounds such as collagen, cartilage, gelatin or fish protein hydrolysates for different industrial uses from discarded biomass.
The LIFEiSEAS consortium ends the valorization process, which began more than a year ago with the start-up of plant facilities for the manufacture of products for human consumption from these discarded species.
Designed for demonstration and non-commercial purposes, the pilot plant is already fully operational for the management and valuation of discards and fishing byproducts. And according to those responsible for the project, it is having a very good reception in different business sectors, industrial and R&D+I groups, which are already using this compound or expressed interest in collaborating in the development of different lines of work.
The presentation took place in the Port Operations building of Marin in an informative day in which CETMAR Foundation director Paloma Rueda, and general director of Fisheries Development Susana Rodríguez participated. It was also attended by Port Authority of Marín and Pontevedra Estuary president José Benito Suárez, and Juan Carlos Martín Fragueiro, managing director of the Fresh Fishing Producers’ Organization of the port and Marín Estuary (OPROMAR), partner of LIFEiSEAS.
This project, financed by the European Union, ends at the end of June, although in the next three years new release and demonstration activities will continue to be carried out as established by the LIFE program.
In addition to the multipurpose plant, within the framework of this project, an innovative system was developed, the iObserver, to characterize fish catches on board and automatically.
The objective of all this innovative technology is to contribute to the optimization of the fishing activity and better management of discards and marine resources, thus seeking a model of fisheries sustainability.
CETMAR, the Galicia Supercomputing Centre (CESGA), the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), OPROMAR and Talleres Josmar SL participated in the iSEAS project, coordinated by Marine Research Institute-CSIC of Vigo.
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