Qatar Open Innovation

Challenge Statement

Marine Sustainability: Building Smart System Tracking and Retrieval for Marine Ecosystem Resilience

How might we design and deploy smart, scalable systems that protect, monitor, and actively sustain the marine environment while enabling practical adoption across diverse maritime and coastal contexts?

The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MoECC) is seeking solution providers to develop effective, scalable systems that reduce the environmental impact of fishing nets across their full lifecycle. While current efforts rely on manual field inspections and periodic reports, there is no centralized digital system providing real-time visibility into the location and status of lost, abandoned, or illegal "ghost" nets. MoECC is open to diverse technological approaches, including net tagging, autonomous retrieval drones, or impact-limiting net designs.

Your solution should combine mechanical robustness with advanced tracking or mitigation capabilities capable of operating in high-salinity Gulf waters at depths of up to 60 meters. It must deliver location accuracy within ±10 m and include a secure method to associate nets with operator identification to ensure accountability and enable practical intervention.

The goal is to protect the marine ecosystem, reduce fish mortality, and prevent damage to critical offshore infrastructure through a transparent, data-driven, and scalable marine reclamation solution.

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How might we design and deploy smart, scalable systems that protect, monitor, and actively sustain the marine environment while enabling practical adoption across diverse maritime and coastal contexts?

How might we design and deploy smart, scalable systems that protect, monitor, and actively sustain the marine environment while enabling practical adoption across diverse maritime and coastal contexts?

The marine environment in the State of Qatar is increasingly impacted by illegal, abandoned, or lost fishing nets. Once nets are cast into the ocean, they are extremely difficult to locate again, particularly when they sink or become entangled in coral reefs, marine wildlife including endangered species, or critical offshore infrastructure such as oil and gas platforms, subsea pipelines, and marine cables. These ghost nets continue to cause ecosystem degradation, fish mortality, operational disruption, and rising costs for monitoring and removal.

The scale of the challenge is significant. Individual fishermen typically deploy fishing nets ranging from 2 to 3 kilometres in length, and when aggregated across the fishing community, the total length of nets operating within Qatar’s waters reaches substantial levels. Given this scale, post-loss detection alone is insufficient, and there is a need to focus more upstream on the moment nets are deployed, as well as on reducing the overall duration and impact of lost nets in the marine environment.

Current approaches rely largely on periodic field inspections and reports from Coast and Border Security, QatarEnergy, and sea-goers. These methods do not provide real-time or comprehensive visibility and are constrained by manual processes. Traditional techniques such as visible or night-light buoys have proven ineffective due to theft, damage, and the inability to locate nets once submerged, particularly at depth. Previous trials have also shown limitations arising from inaccurate location tracking caused by water currents, high manpower requirements including the need for divers, the absence of a centralized digital system, and challenges in identifying net ownership in cases of loss or violation.

The challenge therefore seeks effective, scalable solutions that reduce the environmental impact of fishing nets across their full lifecycle. Solutions will be evaluated based on their overall effectiveness in lowering harm to the marine ecosystem rather than adherence to a single technological approach.

The long-term ambition is deployment across Qatar’s full Exclusive Economic Zone. For proof-of-concept validation, solutions should demonstrate feasibility at depths of 15 to 20 metres initially, with a clear and credible pathway to operate at depths of up to 60 metres. Solutions that prove robust in the marine context may also present opportunities for extension into land-based tracking or recovery applications.

Illustrative solution directions (non-exhaustive examples)

Net tagging and tracking: Attaching physical or digital identifiers to nets to enable location tracking, ownership identification, and detection of lost or abandoned nets once deployed.
Retrieval-first approaches: Locating and removing lost or abandoned nets efficiently, for example using underwater drones or other autonomous underwater/surface systems to reduce time-in-water and ecosystem damage.
Impact-limiting net design: Developing nets that degrade, deactivate, or lose fishing effectiveness over time to minimise long-term harm where tracking or retrieval is not feasible.

Note that these are just examples of solution directions. MOECC is open to consider any solution that can effectively help tackle the issue.

Technical requirements:

Ability to operate reliably in marine environments at depths of 15–20 m for POC, with a clear pathway to up to 60 m
Resistance to high salinity, elevated temperatures, and prolonged submersion typical of Gulf waters
Mechanical robustness against tension, shock, twisting, and movement associated with fishing operations
Support for long-duration or continuous operation with minimal maintenance requirements
Energy solutions suitable for marine deployment, including long-life power sources or energy-harvesting approaches
Secure capability to associate nets with fisherman or operator identification, where applicable
Compatibility with future integration into national marine monitoring or enforcement systems
Where physical tags or embedded devices are used, all microelectronics and materials must be environmentally benign and must not introduce chemical, physical, or biological harm to the marine ecosystem
Detection, tracking, or retrieval effectiveness sufficient to enable practical intervention and environmental impact reduction
Location accuracy appropriate for recovery or monitoring purposes (indicatively within ±10 m where tracking is used)
Ability to identify lost, abandoned, or inactive nets within a defined timeframe and trigger alerts or actions
Reliable operation under dynamic marine conditions, including currents, depth variation, and low visibility
Ease of deployment and use by fishermen or operators without specialist technical expertise
Data security and access control, ensuring confidentiality for users and access limited to authorized authorities
Demonstrated scalability across large maritime areas, up to Qatar’s full Economic Zone
Environmental endurance standards: Ability to operate in Gulf conditions with high salinity and temperature; corrosion resistance
Water-pressure standards: Full functionality at depths up to 60 meters
Electrical safety standards: Safe, reliable batteries resistant to heat and pressure without leakage
Communication and data-transfer standards: Support for low-power marine communication protocols, with satellite connectivity when needed
Environmental sustainability standards: Use of marine-safe and recyclable materials
Durability standards: Resistance to shocks, pulling forces, and currents
Cybersecurity standards: Protection of fishermen and authority data through encryption and controlled access

Performance Criteria:

Solutions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Generally, the most important goal is to reduce the impact on the marine ecosystem. We understand that this might mean that there is an increase in cost per net and will evaluate ROI on a case-by-case basis

Cost targets will be determined on a case-by-case basis

Phase 1 (POC): starting off from Q3 2026
Phase 2: Commercial roll-out: From Q1 2027 onwards

Exact figures cannot yet be determined. However, if successful, the solution may see strong demand within Qatar, the GCC, and globally, due to the widespread issue of abandoned and “ghost” nets worldwide.

Cash support:
Up to 100,000 USD from QRDI can be made available depending on the project proposal and to be agreed on a case-by-case basis

In-kind contributions:

Mentorship and support for solution development.
Relevant data, designated marine testing sites, and access to necessary hardware components for development and deployment.

We are looking for SMEs and startups with solutions that can be implemented in a relatively short-time frame (TRL of 5 and higher).

For Background IP (BIP), both parties will retain their respective IPs brought into the project. In the event of new Foreground IP (FIP) creation, potential ownership will be determined on a case-by-case basis dependent on the contributions of each party.

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Smart SEAstems for Marine Reclamation Challenge

How might we design and deploy smart, scalable systems that protect, monitor, and actively sustain the marine environment while enabling practical adoption across diverse maritime and coastal contexts?

Challenge Statement

How might we design and deploy smart, scalable systems that protect, monitor, and actively sustain the marine environment while enabling practical adoption across diverse maritime and coastal contexts?

How might we design and deploy smart, scalable systems that protect, monitor, and actively sustain the marine environment while enabling practical adoption across diverse maritime and coastal contexts?