Basic principles for development and implementation of plastic clean-up technologies: What can we learn from fisheries management?

Plastic pollution compromises ocean health, with large amounts of plastics continuing to enter marine and coastal environments. Various mitigative engineering solutions are being developed and implemented in response to this threat. While recognising the positive impacts of clean-ups, we highlight two perspectives given little attention to date, which are vital to evaluating the cost-benefit ratio of clean-ups: firstly, clean-up efficiency where density and accessibility of litter are key, and secondly, potential negative externalities that implementation of clean-up technologies may have. These principles, catch per unit effort and the impact on non-target species, are well known from fisheries management. We argue they should also be applied in evaluating marine litter removal schemes. • Plastic clean-up technologies generally lack environmental cost-benefit analyses. • We suggest key principles from fisheries management for such evaluations. • Principles of catch efficiency and bycatch reduction are relevant for plastic clean-ups. • Scarce data on plastic distribution and overlap with ecosystem components limits evaluation. • A lack of cost-benefits analyses risks damage to ecosystems and inefficient mitigation actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]