TartaLife wins the Life Award 2021!!
Il progetto si è confermato come il più amato dai cittadini con ben 2.599 voti a favore in una rosa di 15 finalisti. Premiati sei anni di lavoro di ricerca per ridurre la mortalità delle tartarughe marine durante le attività di pesca professionale.
The TartaLife project won the Life Award 2021 confirming itself as the most loved by citizens. 2,599 people chose him from the 15 Life finalists on the website www.lifeawards.eu. Therefore, six years of research, awareness and training work, six years of experimentation of practices to reduce the mortality of sea turtles during professional fishing activities, have led to significant reductions in catches and mortality of this species. In particular, thanks to the direct involvement of fishermen and the use of bycatch reduction devices (BRDs) such as circle hooks, UV LED lights or Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs), a substantial reduction in accidental catches has been achieved, ranging from 30 to 100% depending on the fishing gears, with a sharp decrease in cases of serious injuries for specimens accidentally caught.
“We are very happy for this award. TartaLife was an extremely difficult project in many aspects, but at the same time very stimulating - declared Alessandro Lucchetti of CNR-IRBIM - We started from an initial situation of general distrust towards fishermen and great confusion in which the areas and periods of highest risk for turtles were unclear. At the end of the project the results achieved are clear: we now know which gears have the most impact and which areas are at risk of bycatch, we have developed systems to reduce accidental catches by also developing a Turtle Safe certification mark, we have strengthened the recovery and training centers, without neglecting the activities with hundreds of thousands of citizens. We now have entire seafarers collaborating in the recovery of the turtles and the greatest satisfaction is when it is the fishermen who contact us to ask how to reduce the catches. The road to the protection of turtles has been traced by TartaLife, now is the time to put to good use what we have experienced ".
"This award, for Legambiente, which was one of the main creators and architects of the project together with CNR-IRBIM, is a great satisfaction - declared the national president of Legambiente Stefano Ciafani - An important recognition to an initiative that has been able to combine scientific research, conservation, information and awareness-raising by actively involving some stakeholders such as fishermen and local communities who have been instrumental in achieving the objectives of this ambitious project and to which we dedicate this prestigious award. There is still a long way to go to ensure adequate protection for sea turtles, but thanks also to this project, a good step forward has been made ".
