Team details

Team member

Project details

Describe your product and your key goals

<aside> <img src="/icons/apple_blue.svg" alt="/icons/apple_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Describe your product MOP DROP (Myanmar Ocean Project, Disposal Rig for Ocean Plastic) is a collection shed for end-of-life fishing gear and other ocean-bound plastics built on a pontoon. This MOP DROP will be located in one of the hotspots for abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG), Sitat Galet village in Lampi National Marine Park. This remote quiet bay is frequented by fishing boats in the archipelago in southern Myanmar and MOP DROP will allow fishers and community members using the space to properly dispose of end-of-life fishing gear and other ALDFG collected from the marine environment. It is projected to collect and prevent at least 61 tons of ALDFG from entering the ocean around the Lampi Marine Park region during its first year of implementation.

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<aside> <img src="/icons/emoji-disappointed_pink.svg" alt="/icons/emoji-disappointed_pink.svg" width="40px" /> What pain points are you trying to solve?

Pain point:

The thousands of fishing boats working in the region have no access to disposal facilities. Each boat during their fishing season spends between two weeks to four months at sea before returning to their home ports. The end-of-life fishing gear produced during their fishing trips along with consumer waste and marine debris their nets are catching along with fish are discarded back in the ocean, for lack of storage on boats among various other reasons. It is therefore crucial that these problems are tackled at sea and not just at ports in major cities. MOP DROP will

Prevent further destruction of the marine ecosystem in these areas of marine biodiversity and cultural importance.
Prevent additional depletion of harvestable fish stock in areas where the local island communities and indigenous Moken communities are already vulnerable to overfishing and are under immerse pressure for livelihood stability.
Prevent harm to the fishing boats. Many of the fishers we have engaged with during our interviews have requested support for disposal facilities. </aside>

Describe your customers and the problem you are solving

<aside> <img src="/icons/brain_blue.svg" alt="/icons/brain_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Describe your target customers

Fishers working in the Myeik Archipelago.
Island communities in the Myeik Archipelago. </aside>

<aside> <img src="/icons/bullseye_green.svg" alt="/icons/bullseye_green.svg" width="40px" /> What you want to achieve by March 2025

MOP DROP is installed in Sitat Galet village in Lampi Marine Park to prevent at least 50% of an annual estimate of 123.6 ton of ALDFG from entering the ocean around the marine park in the first year. It is expected to collect 5 tons at the end of the first month it is launched.

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What you want to achieve by March 2027

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MOP DROP is collecting at least 90 tons of ALDFG in the second year of deployment, 75% of what is expected to end up in the ocean around Lampi Marine Park. Island communities are involved in outreach and taking the lead in expending collection. The location suitable for the third MOP DROP is already established. Significant recovery in marine wildlife in the bay is visible. </aside>

Describe what you need the most

<aside> <img src="/icons/bell-notification_pink.svg" alt="/icons/bell-notification_pink.svg" width="40px" /> Describe the kinds of help you need the most (funding, expertise, technology, access, etc).

Expertise : A business plan to make MOP DROP financially sustainable for the future. The project would like to incentivize the fishing communities to support and supplement the incomes of fishers and island communities. We are hoping to find the most suitable way to create an income from the collected nets, as a way to support the collection and transportation expenses from these remote locations.
Technical support : Learning to differentiate types of materials the nets collected are made of to assess potential to recycle and/or up-cycle.
Funding: MOP DROP upkeep and incentive for fishers to deposit for the next year. </aside>