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There are several research infrastructures or other data services running in Europe that cover a multitude of marine-related sciences, providing specific datasets coming from observations collected with different methods. These infrastructures constitute a diverse world, each looking at a piece of the big picture, sometimes hindering collaboration and data sharing. Blue-Cloud aims to overcome fragmentation and build a bridge between thematic science clusters - such as marine, climate, food and agriculture sciences - and EOSC, creating a data federation and providing a common access to a so-called thematic EOSC for marine data. By connecting leading marine data management infrastructures with horizontal e-infrastructures, the project aims to maximise the exploitation of data resources available from different sources. The Blue-Cloud framework consists of two major technical components: (1) a Blue-Cloud Data Discovery and Access service, already presented in a previous EOSC in practice story, to serve federated discovery and access to blue data infrastructures, and (2) a Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment (VRE) to provide computing platforms and analytical services facilitating the collaboration between researchers, which is detailed hereafter. The Blue-Cloud VRE is powered by the D4Science Infrastructure. [M. Assante et al. (2019) Enacting open science by D4Science. Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 101: 555-563 10.1016/j.future.2019.05.063 ] The full list of EOSC in practice stories is available here

This is the English version of the informed consent that has been used for staekholder interactions. Similar forms have been used for focus groups and workshops.

Optical projection tomography is the optical analogue of X-ray tomography, a 3D mesoscopic imaging modality of the optical attenuation or fluorescence intensity distribution within transparent samples. As current limitations, the requirement of several hundreds of angular projections for filtered backprojection reconstruction leads to acquisition times of several minutes. While iterative methods allow to reconstruct images from sparsely sampled datasets, they convey several seconds, thus precluding from real-time reconstruction. Here we present a model-based unrolled network with a CNN as a regularization prior, trained on four zebrafish datasets. Based on an alternating algorithm, our network rapidly reconstructs high quality images from few projections within milliseconds. Youtube: https://youtu.be/4sNyq7zFEC8 This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 867450. (OPTIMAR: OPTical Imaging of Molecular and signalling Activity in Real-time: application to flatfish metamorphosis, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/867450). The project was also supported by NVIDIA GPU hardware grant and FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology through projects UIDB/04326/2020, UIDP/04326/2020 and LA/P/0101/2020.

Ten innovative EU projects to build ocean observation systems that provide input for evidence-based management of the ocean and the Blue Economy, have joined forces in the strong cluster ‘Nourishing Blue Economy and Sharing Ocean Knowledge’. Under the lead of the EuroSea project, the group published a joint policy brief listing recommendations for sustainable ocean observation and management. The cooperation is supported by the EU Horizon Results Booster and enables the group to achieve a higher societal impact. The policy brief will be presented to the European Commission on 15 October 2021. The ocean covers 70% of the Earth’s surface and provides us with a diverse set of ecosystem services that we cannot live without or that significantly improve our quality of life. It is the primary controller of our climate, plays a critical role in providing the air we breathe and the fresh water we drink, supplies us with a large range of exploitable resources (from inorganic resources such as sand and minerals to biotic resources such as seafood), allows us to generate renewable energy, is an important pathway for world transport, an important source of income for tourism, etc. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) evaluates the Blue Economy to currently represent 2.5% of the world economic value of goods and services produced, with the potential to further double in size by 2030 (seabed mining, shipping, fishing, tourism, renewable energy systems and aquaculture will intensify). However, the overall consequences of the intensification of human activities on marine ecosystems and their services (such as ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, sea level rise, changing distribution and abundance of fish etc.) are still poorly quantified. In addition, on larger geographic and temporal scales, marine data currently appear fragmented, are inhomogeneous, contain data gaps and are difficult to access. This limits our capacity to understand the ocean variability and sustainably manage the ocean and its resources. Consequently, there is a need to develop a framework for more in-depth understanding of marine ecosystems, that links reliable, timely and fit-for-purpose ocean observations to the design and implementation of evidence-based decisions on the management of the ocean. To adequately serve governments, societies, the sustainable Blue Economy and citizens, ocean data need to be collected and delivered in line with the Value Chain of Ocean Information: 1) identification of required data; 2) deployment and maintenance of instruments that collect the data; 3) delivery of data and derived information products; and 4) impact assessment of services to end users. To provide input to the possible future establishment of such a framework, ten innovative EU projects to build user-focused, interdisciplinary, responsive and sustained ocean information systems and increase the sustainability of the Blue Economy, joined forces in a strong cluster to better address key global marine challenges. Under the lead of the EuroSea project, the group translated its common concerns to recommendations and listed these in the joint policy brief ‘Nourishing Blue Economy and Sharing Ocean Knowledge. Ocean Information for Sustainable Management.’. Following up on these recommendations will strengthen the entire Value Chain of Ocean Information and ensure sound sustainable ocean management. In this way, the 10 projects jointly strive to achieve goals set out in the EU Green Deal, the Paris Agreement (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and the United Nations 2021-2030 Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Ocean Development. Toste Tanhua (GEOMAR), EuroSea coordinator: “It was great to collaborate with these other innovative projects and make joint recommendations based on different perspectives and expertise.”

Leaflet on the climate service for winter tourism industry, co-designed by Blue-Action: Arctic Impact on Weather and Climate (EU Horizon 2020) WP5 CS1. English language version.

The MEDWAVES (MEDiterranean out flow WAter and Vulnerable EcosystemS) cruise targeted areas under the potential influence of the MOW within the Mediterranean and Atlantic realms. These include seamounts where Cold-water corals (CWCs) have been reported but that are still poorly known, and which may act as essential “stepping stones” connecting fauna of seamounts in the Mediterranean with those of the continental shelf of Portugal, the Azores and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. One of this target areas is the Ormonde seamount; where four ROV videos transects (D) were conducted between 660 and 1960 m depth to explore the deep-sea macrobenthic communities. Here we presented the identification catalogue for this area.

The MEDWAVES (MEDiterranean out flow WAter and Vulnerable EcosystemS) cruise targeted areas under the potential influence of the MOW within the Mediterranean and Atlantic realms. These include seamounts where Cold-water corals (CWCs) have been reported but that are still poorly known, and which may act as essential “stepping stones” connecting fauna of seamounts in the Mediterranean with those of the continental shelf of Portugal, the Azores and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. One of this target areas is the guyot named El Seco de los Olivos (Chella Bank); where six ROV videos transects were conducted between 282 and 793 m depth to explore the deep-sea macrobenthic communities. Here we present the identification catalogue for deep-sea fauna.

Oceans and Human Health (OHH) is a meta-discipline exploring the complex and inextricable links between the health of the ocean and that of humans. It is our vision that OHH will be recognized as a core component of the Planetary Health concept, with OHH awareness spreading through all relevant fields and communities. This will help build the required OHH research capacity to understand the links between ocean health and human health, in order to optimize the outcomes for both. This Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) presents the necessary OHH research that will enable fundamental questions to be answered, evidence to be provided to policy, and OHH literacy to be increased in Europe and beyond.