PingMe, - a tool for Detection, Identification and POsitioning LOst Gear in the ocean

Globally, 640k tonnes of abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) make their way into the ocean every year. The lost gear continues to fish for decades, generates plastic pollution, and entangles marine mammals, birds, and turtles to death. It also causes direct economic losses to the fisheries sector, with 1-5% revenue loss due to lost catch, gear, and resources spent looking for the lost gear. OSAC has developed PingMe, an acoustic system for detecting, identifying, and positioning fishing gear under water to prevent ghost fishing. It establishes a PingMe network of users through the Cloud Service. Every member of the network can detect “PingMe” gear belonging to any user preventing gear conflicts, propeller entanglements, and massively increases the chances for detection of any lost gear. PingMe also allow users to see the position of the gear under water during active fishing and collect marine data contributing to increase fisheries efficiency and sustainability. PingMe has been demonstrated on a range of fishing-boats at open sea (TRL6). With EIC-A, OSAC aims to 1) fine-tune and improve system features while reducing COGS and providing differentiated price models to expand its market range towards more fisheries’ segments 2) further demonstrate the optimized PingMe in operational environments, at scale 3) prepare scale-up, commercialization, and market roll-out of PingMe. This project will unlock PingMe sales and enable OSAC to become a global market leader in the sustainable/ precision fishing segment while contributing to prevent ghost fishing.