This study aims to establish an integrated life-cycle management system for fishing gear to promote the recovery and resource circulation of end-of-life fishing gear. Fishing gear is a core means of fisheries production, but when it is lost, abandoned...
This study aims to establish an integrated life-cycle management system for fishing gear to promote the recovery and resource circulation of end-of-life fishing gear. Fishing gear is a core means of fisheries production, but when it is lost, abandoned, or improperly discarded after use, it can cause marine debris, ghost fishing, habitat degradation, navigation risks, and failure in resource circulation. Existing policies in South Korea have largely focused on post-collection and disposal, while insufficiently linking production-stage material management, traceability, return promotion, rapid removal, pre-treatment, recycling, quality certification, public procurement, and re-entry into production. This study therefore reconceptualizes end-of-life fishing gear as a life-cycle policy object that should be managed across production, distribution, use, return, removal, pre-treatment, recycling, and reintegration. The study focuses on traps, gillnets, and aquaculture buoys, which are major gear types in Korean coastal fisheries and closely related to marine debris and recycling policy. It uses policy documents, legal materials, administrative records, operational data, previous studies, joint research results, and relevant technical data. Rather than conducting a nationwide long-term impact evaluation of each policy instrument, this study adopts an integrated policy-analysis approach to identify institutional conditions, operational bottlenecks, and implementation pathways for a life-cycle fishing gear management system. The findings are threefold. First, the return of end-of-life fishing gear cannot be promoted effectively through a deposit-refund system alone. Although the trap gear deposit-refund system is meaningful as an initial model linking production, sales, return, refund, and treatment, its early operation revealed limitations such as low initial refund performance, confusion in tag attachment and sales management, regional imbalances in return infrastructure, and limited incentives for existing or non-covered gear. Since the system has been expanded to gillnets, aquaculture buoys, and eel traps, the key policy task is differentiated design and stable operation rather than simple expansion. A combined model linking the deposit-refund system, a recovery-promotion point system, and an integrated digital platform is therefore needed to provide both minimum return responsibility and performance-based incentives. Second, the prolonged presence of illegal and abandoned fishing gear reflects regulatory delay and post-removal treatment bottlenecks. The conventional system has relied on general administrative execution procedures, placing notice, warning, and warrant issuance before physical removal. The 2024 rapid-removal pilot operation showed that response time can be substantially reduced when pre-removal procedures are minimized and post-removal storage, waste treatment, and reporting are integrated into a coordinated operational chain. Decommissioned fishing vessels may also serve as dedicated offshore pre-treatment vessels to address the limitations of land-based treatment systems, including high transportation costs, insufficient storage sites, and low recycling rates. However, this model should be understood as a conditional operational alternative rather than a universal solution. Third, increasing the quantity of recovered fishing gear alone is insufficient to transform it into a stable circular resource. Gillnets, traps, and aquaculture buoys are composed of heterogeneous synthetic resins such as polyamide, polypropylene, and polyethylene. Marine exposure causes degradation, contamination, salinity accumulation, fouling, and quality instability, while mixed-material structures increase pre-treatment costs and reduce recyclability. Therefore, material simplification, especially around polyethylene and polypropylene, should be promoted from the production stage. A phased recycled raw material content mandate should be introduced according to product groups and performance requirements, together with a KS/GR-based quality certification system, public procurement, and private market expansion. The material-property data used in this study are treated as supporting evidence from previous studies and external technical data, not as the author’s own independent experimental results. Based on these findings, this study proposes an integrated life-cycle management model composed of three interconnected policy pillars: a deposit– point-based return promotion system for end-of-life fishing gear, a rapid-removal and pre-treatment system for illegal and abandoned fishing gear, and a recycling and re-entry system based on recycled raw materials, quality certification, public procurement, and market formation. These pillars should be supported by an integrated information platform, a dedicated management organization, and a phased legislative framework connecting production, sales, use, loss reporting, return, removal, pre-treatment, recycling, and re-entry into a single policy chain. The academic contribution of this study lies in its reconceptualization of end-of-life fishing gear as a life-cycle management object rather than an isolated waste problem. It also identifies regulatory delay and treatment bottlenecks as combined institutional and operational causes of ineffective management of illegal and abandoned fishing gear, and reframes fishing gear recycling as a circular-economy issue requiring the integration of material properties, certification, public procurement, market formation, and legal design. From a policy perspective, this study contributes by proposing a deposit–point linked return model, a rapid-removal and pre-treatment framework, a recycled raw material mandate combined with certification and public procurement, and an integrated governance and legislative roadmap. This study should be understood as a policy-integration study that identifies institutional conditions and implementation pathways, rather than as a nationwide long-term impact evaluation of each policy instrument. In conclusion, fishing gear management should move beyond post-collection disposal and be transformed into an integrated life-cycle circular management system that links prevention, field response, resource circulation, and reintegration into production.