Citizens’ decisions are central to living within the limits of our planet. Purchasing choices can drive change at retail and raw commodity levels but the complexity of fish and seafood food chains, health benefits and risks, and climate impacts need to be simplified and made more accessible and readily comparable. Currently, there are no standardised ways to inform citizens about the various health issues, nor are there guidelines or harmonised indicators for sustainable European fish and seafood products. VeriFish will offer a framework of verifiable sustainability indicators for communications about sustainability based on FAIR data from EU- and global aquafoods repositories, brought together through the extraordinary collaboration of European-wide actors like NOFIMA, EUROFIR and POSEIDON. Leveraging on this indicator, VeriFish will design, develop, and disseminate a number of media products to help citizens, seafood consumers and retailers, associations and policy makers make informed consumption choices. NOFIMA domain experts will work with renowned scientific communicators from EuroFISH and experienced community builder Trust-IT publish a good practice recommendation framework on neutral indicators to communicate sustainability along different consumer segments, aquafood retailers, seafood and aquaculture producers and associations, as well as guidelines for their use in retail and HoReCa (hotels, restaurants, catering). A prototype web application will digest indicators into an accessible (easy to use) comprehensive media product for user communities, including citizens, summarising nutrition, sustainability, and biodiversity aspects. The framework will be open access, and will be tested via a series of related end-user engagement campaigns targeting younger generations via flashcard games for kids, calendars and maps of seasonal fish for retailers and consumers, and sustainable food influencers & chefs on social media.

Project aims to enhance marine fishery industry in Albania through several tasks: 1) development of new professional master degree in marine fishery that will meet market needs, 2) enhancement of collaboration among Blue Growth stakeholders by developing networking platform, and 3) improvement of maritime training centres which provide professional trainings to seafarers operating on fishing vessels.The new curriculum in marine fishery will be developed through collaboration of scientific experts and marine industry stakeholders. Curriculum will provide students with theoretical knowledge and practical skills that are required by the labour market needs, which will have a positive impact on employability of students and matching of the labour market demand.Furthermore, the new curriculum will offer more practice oriented opportunities, contributing to university-enterprise cooperation, opening door to new research opportunities and knowledge exchange among industry stakeholders and academics. The creation of the networking platform that will unite all stakeholders active in marine fishery field, education institutions, graduated students, private companies and organizations, will further contribute to that since it will provide the stakeholders with opportunities for new partnerships, exchange know-how, access to up-to-date market information, qualified staff and/or employment opportunities.Improving the maritime training centre for professional seafarers operating on fishing vessels allows us to penetrate and shape the marine fishery industry from another angle which is the field of exploitation and fishing. Currently training centres are not in accordance with IMO standards and the requirements of EU legislation. Developing new courses for professional seafarers would have positive impact on environment protection, decrease in safety hazards, at the same time improving fishing and exploitation efficiency and international collaboration opportunities.

The objective of SAFE project is to reduce the environmental impact and improve the viability of the FW aquaculture by applying circular economy approaches to the valorisation of solid and liquid wastes from recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and integThe main objective of SAFE project is to reduce the environmental impact and improve the viability of the FW aquaculture by applying circular economy (CE) approaches to the valorisation of solid and liquid wastes from recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) systems. The economic viability of FW aquaculture will be improved through major advances in management systems and the integration of waste streams from FW aquaculture systems (FWAS) into the aquaculture feed chain. SAFE will enable the uptake of these solutions through local and regional scale demonstrations across the EU and will document the necessary management and governance conditions for successful transferability. The multidisciplinary expertise of the consortium across a wide range of systems, species and geographies will target the enhancement of species of particular biodiversity concerns, such as European native crayfish. We will improve the sustainability of FW aquaculture production and investigate the feasibility of diversification through the culture of under-represented species (perch) and valuable crayfish species with declining populations. Lastly, we will compare the experiences of EU FW aquaculture to Chinese FWAS and value chains, the largest, fastest-growing and most diverse aquaculture sector in the world, using mutual knowledge sharing to improve the sustainability of aquaculture in China and the EU. SAFE, through extensive dissemination activities, knowledge transfer programmes, training workshops and collaborative engagement with industry and stakeholders, will support the development of professional skills and competencies of the FW aquaculture both within the EU and partner countries.