Linked projects

MARCO-BOLO (MBO) aims to structure and strengthen European coastal and marine biodiversity observation capabilities, linking them to global efforts to understand and restore ocean health, hence ensuring that outputs respond to explicit stakeholder needs from policy, planning and industry. To this end MBO will establish and engage with a Community of Practice (CoP) to determine end-user needs with the aim of optimising marine data flows, knowledge uptake, and improving governance based on biodiversity observations.
By exploiting synergies with concurrent projects MBO will develop and demonstrate new autonomous technology for biodiversity mapping and monitoring, and data streams from remote sensing, eDNA, robotics, optical and acoustic observations. Protocols for eDNA-based biodiversity observations are established and validated across applications, taxa and ecosystems. The sequence of the analytical and technical processes for the different use cases will be incorporated into operational Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) and Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) and included into online reusable workflows, contributing to the free and open access of EU and global biodiversity information facilities, and to support major EU biodiversity directives and global initiatives.
The project partnership will leverage its international activities (MBON, GOOS, OBIS) and participation in UN Ocean Decade Programmes (Marine Life 2030, OBON, ODIS, Ocean Practices for the Decade) to align the MBO work programme to global CoP, ensuring European participation and leadership in global biodiversity monitoring and global science. MBO results will be designed to build upon existing capability and infrastructures, and to be relevant to existing frameworks so that outputs can be easily integrated into national, regional (EU and adjacent sea basins), and global observation systems, with no delay ensuring the reusability of the investments Europe is already making in data generation.

BIOcean5D will build a unique suite of technologies, protocols, and models allowing holistic re-exploration of marine biodiversity, from viruses to mammals, from genomes to holobionts, across multiple spatial and temporal scales stretching from pre-industrial to today. A focus is to understand pan-European biodiversity land-to-sea gradients and ecosystem services, including marine exposomes, that will deploy mobile labs, research vessels and innovative citizen science tools, across 21 coastal countries and 35 marine labs from the Mediterranean to Arctic seas. New data will be harmonized with existing data into an open-access data hub, leveraging international infrastructures, and generating transformative, cross-technologies/cross-scales standard marine biodiversity knowledge at the socio-ecosystem level. Knowledge will inform and constrain (i) new theories and models of marine biodiversity ecological and evolutionary dynamics and drivers, at both taxonomic and functional scales, (ii) a portfolio of novel holistic indicators of marine ecosystem health, (iii) innovative methods and protocols for economic and legal valuations of marine biodiversity and services integrating the dynamical and functional complexity of marine life. BIOcean5D will create a unique opportunity to bridge molecular/subcellular biology to organismal biology, theoretical ecology and econometrics, and marine complex systems to social sciences, toward the sustainable preservation of our oceans and seas.

EuroSea works to improve the European ocean observing and forecasting system in a global context, delivering ocean observations and forecasts to advance scientific knowledge about ocean climate, marine ecosystems and their vulnerability to human impacts and to demonstrate the importance of the ocean to an economically viable and healthy society.
Vision: Advancing research and innovation towards a user-focused, truly interdisciplinary, and responsive European ocean observing and forecasting system, that delivers the essential information needed for human wellbeing and safety, sustainable development and blue economy in a changing world.
Mission: Co-designing European ocean observing and forecasting services and products that deliver information and support decision-making in the areas of climate, coastal and maritime activities, and ocean health.

TechOceanS will develop nine innovative technologies and methods for deep sea sensing, sample collection and on-board analysis, and AI-driven image processing and transmission. The technologies developed will expand our knowledge of the ocean’s interconnected systems and provide tangible benefits to the industries that rely on them, such as fisheries and aquaculture. The data generated will also support conservation initiatives and provide vital information to policy makers.

In this highly multidisciplinary project, laboratory approaches, studies at sea and modelling approaches are combined to answer various questions related to the life cycle of the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata. In particular we aim to i) understand the endogenous mechanisms that control the diatom life cycle (what are the signal transduction mechanisms? What are the gene networks involved? Is there an epigenetic control in the transitions between the life cycle phases?); ii) follow the natural populations at sea through population genomics, in order to understand the genetic structure but also the dynamics of genome evolution; iii) estimate how much the genetic diversification processes are guided by environmental factors, how much genetic diversity is the result of the neutral interaction between cell division, genetic mutation and recombination, and what is the expected effect of environmental perturbations on rates of division, mutation and recombination.

MicroplastiX is an international interdisciplinary project bringing together 15 partners from 7 countries. The main goal of the project is to improve our understanding of the degradation mechanisms that affect microplastics (MPs) in environmental conditions, an issue of pressing urgency on which there is still relatively scarce information.

The EU-funded AtlantECO project aims to develop and apply a novel, unifying framework that provides knowledge-based resources for a better understanding and management of the Atlantic Ocean and its ecosystem services.
AtlantECO will engage with citizens and actors from the industry and policy sectors in order to stimulate responsible behaviour and Blue Growth.
The project focuses on three pillars of research: microbiomes, plastic and the plastisphere, and seascape connectivity.
In pursuit of this goal, AtlantECO is bringing together experts and pioneers from Europe, South America and South Africa with the relevant resources, knowledge and experience.