Diversea 2024 annual meeting held in Athens

The DiverSea partners had their 2024 Annual Meeting between the 8^th and 10^th of October, in Athens, Greece. Over fifty participants, representing all 19 institutes of the DiverSea consortium as well as other entities participated. Together the team shared the work carried out in the first year of the project, and discussed the way forward.

This 3-day event kicked off with a warm welcome by the Host Institute, DiverSea partner National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). All DiverSea work packages (WP) were presented, from creating, collecting, analyzing and predicting marine (biodiversity) data, to the communication, dissemination, coordination and ethic guidance. LPN, as leader of WP5, presented the work carried out on communication and citizen science. At the end of the first day, presentations by postdoctoral and other early career researchers were highlighted.

The second and third days were focused on the DiverSea case studies which include the Norwegian and Swedish coast; the Atlantic Portuguese coast; the western Mediterranean and Adriatic; the Eastern Mediterranean, Aegean Sea and Strait of Dardanelles; and the Black Sea.

DiverSea partners are advancing in a wide array of monitoring tools and technologies, including autonomous Surface and underwater Vehicle (ASV and AUV), hyperspectral satellite, buoys and auto-sampling systems. These and other tools will be used to monitor Essential Ocean Variables (EOV) and Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV), such as phytoplankton, chlorophyl, seagrass, species abundance and distribution, microbiome diversity, among others.

Parallel sessions at the Annual Meeting offered a chance to dive into advancements in approaches relative to environmental DNA (eDNA), eRNA and DNAmarks, as well as other robotic technologies.

The importance of DiverSea's work at the cutting edge of marine biodiversity monitoring was emphasized as external presentations helped put our work in broader context. A presentation by the DTO-BioFlow project discussed their contributions to the European Digital Twin Ocean (EU-DTO), and we appreciated presentations from our HORIZON European-funded sister projects MARCO-BOLO and OBAMA-NEXT.

After this successful meeting, the partners are now back to work, refreshed and energized to carry out the work planned for our second year. As we dive back into our research, we are reminded of the clear need for projects like DiverSea and our partner projects to contribute to improving monitoring systems and tackling the immense challenges of biodiversity loss.

About the DiverSea project

The DiverSea – “Integrated Observation, Mapping, Monitoring and Prediction for Functional Biodiversity of Coastal SEAs” project is financed by the European Union, coordinated by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) e brings together a team of 19 partners from 13 countries. This four-year project was launched on the September 1, 2023 and will develop nucleic acid methods, pioneering marine observation and monitoring technology to improve data quality. This will be carried out across multiple case-studies in Europe.

Through seven work packages, the Diversea partners will synthesize multiple streams of research into a workflow that develops and refines new DNA-based monitoring technologies and integrates diverse data platforms and DiverSea´s case studies. By combining and analysing information on Essential ocean and biodiversity variables (EOV and EBV) to explore biodiversity dynamics, a Marine Biodiversity Services Dashboard platform will be produced to communicate the scientific outcomes of DiverSea, including key environmental and socio-economic indicators with quantified scienarios for societal and functional diversity interactions, and biodiversity connections with ecosystem services. The project will engage with different target stakeholders, for example policy makers but also the broader public through stakeholder communication and citizen science. For more information, see https://www.ntnu.edu/diversea