So, let’s start by diving into something that’s been a huge issue in aquaculture and fishing: discarded fishing nets. These often end up in the ocean causing damage to marine life. How big of a problem is this? And what steps are being taken to address it?

“Indeed, it’s still the biggest problem, and it creates a very negative image of our wonderful industry of commercial fishing and aquaculture. The problem is that people are still looking at very old data and wrong data of millions of tons of nets which are floating around, yeah. It’s wrong, and luckily now we have, supported by Europe and the US governments, new monitoring and sensing indicating with very, I would say, sensitive equipment that only 20% of that litter in the oceans is created by marine fishing gear and aquaculture equipment.”

Well, I think everything you’ve just mentioned will be really interesting for most of our audience, as it will give them a new perspective. But anyway, we know that the European Union is working on a range of regulations aimed at improving sustainability in aquaculture, which hopefully will also lead to the integration of a new ISO standard. Can you walk us through the challenges you’ve encountered so far and the goals you aim to achieve?

“It all starts with the Green Deal, yeah, which was actually developed and should be coming to an end in 2030. In that Green Deal, it was indicated that we should address all the marine litter in the seas and the oceans in Europe. For that matter, already the Port Reception Facility Directive, which was written in 2019 and came already in action, Single-Use Plastics Directive, also in 2019, also already in action, and finally the CEN-CENELEC TC 466 on circularity and recyclability of fishing gear and aquaculture equipment came actually into action in 2024 on the 27th of November.
Now, all these are in support of indeed getting where we want to be: cleaning up and getting a cleaner environment. The problem is that this last standard mentioned is only a guideline. It’s not mandatory. And for that matter, what we will try to do is we will continue in 2025, and we have our next meeting of TC 466 in the month of June where probably, we know it this week actually, if the EC [European Commission] will support us. Probably they will; we have good indication they will. And then we can bring this to the level of ISO. If we can create then an ISO standard, that will be totally international and mandatory.”

Thank you, Koen, for this precious and comprehensive overview. Luckily, as we know, the EU isn’t the only one taking action; some industries are stepping up, too. For example, Aquafil has partnered with The Ocean Cleanup, Healthy Seas, and Bureo to drive innovation with nets made with Econyl regenerated nylon. How do you see these initiatives helping to move the needle on a more sustainable aquaculture?

“I wanted to congratulate actually the people of Aquafil because being a role model and having already those wonderful initiatives are leading other companies to follow. Now, if we look at recycling, then unfortunately the EU was not following the companies created five to six years ago. Due to that, those companies, they needed actually support in legal basis, which is not out there yet. So the market is not ready to follow because they don’t have to. Unless it becomes mandatory, those companies will be sustainable. Unfortunately, you have visionaries created them already five, six years ago, and now we heard at the stakeholder meeting of TC 466 in November last year that several of those companies went bankrupt. And that’s not really the path we should go on sustainability.”

Of course, this is not the path we want to undertake. So, taking all of this into consideration, what other innovative solutions or collaborations do you think are crucial to making aquaculture more conscious and reducing its environmental impact?

“I think, and as indicated, we go back to question one more or less. Why? Because the image needs to be polished. And the waters worldwide, oceans, and commercial fishing and aquaculture, they are providing a tremendous amount of food. So we’re doing a good thing. And aquaculture especially is very conscious of this environmental impact, yeah. The challenge is that the innovation that can advance the industry needs sufficient support as indicated already, also financially. And perhaps if I may add from our side, I-Coats, being the CEO of I-Coats, I can indicate as well that we invest already long time in R&D to come up with alternative environmental friendly fouling-restraining coatings replacing the actual toxic coatings.”