ODYSSEA will develop, operate and demonstrate an interoperable and cost-effective platform that fully integrates networks of observing and forecasting systems across the Mediterranean basin, addressing both the open sea and the coastal zone. The platform will collect its data from the many databases maintained by agencies, public authorities, and institutions of Mediterranean EU and non-EU countries, integrating existing earth observation facilities and networks in the Mediterranean Sea building on key initiatives such as Copernicus, GEOSS, GOOS, EMODNet, ESFRI, Lifewatch, Med-OBIS, GBIF, AquaMaps, Marine IBA e-atlas, MAPAMED and others with marine and maritime links. Through ODYSSEA’s end-user centred approach, in which the various groups of end-users and stakeholders, within and external to the Consortium, will be involved from Day 1 of the project in the design, development and operation of the platform, including identification of gaps in data collection and accessibility. High priority gaps will be filled through multiple approaches that include developing a network of coastal observatories, deploying novel in-situ sensors at sea (a.o. microplastic sensors), oceanographic modelling and integrating existing mobile apps for citizen scientist networks. Applying advanced algorithms to organise, homogenise and fuse the large quantities of data in common standard type and format as well as other types of formats, the ODYSSEA platform will provide both primary data and on-demand derived data services, including forecasts, from ALL Mediterranean countries through a SINGLE PUBLIC PORTAL to various end-user groups and stakeholders. End-user requirements will drive the creation of secondary data sets which the platform will provide as new and packaged services matching the specialised information needs of users. ODYSSEA will improve accessibility to existing data as well as increase the temporal and geographic coverage of observational data in the Mediterranean.

TASCMAR project aspires to develop new tools and strategies in order to overcome existing bottlenecks in the biodiscovery and industrial exploitation of novel marine derived biomolecules (secondary metabolites and enzymes) with applications in the pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals and fine chemicals industries. Exploitation of neglected and underutilized marine invertebrates and symbionts from mesophotic zone will be combined with innovative approaches for the cultivation and extraction of marine organisms from lab to pilot-scale, using the unique prototypes Platotex™ and Zippertex™, both reaching the Technology Readiness Level 7. Thus, marine dedicated cultivation and extraction equipment will be built and validated. These unique improvements will ensure sustainable supply of biomass and promote the production of high added value bioactive marine compounds. An integrated, holistic technological metabolomic approach will be applied, in conjunction with bioactivity profiling, as filtering and bio-prioritisation tools. Moreover, state-of-the-art analytical instrumentation and in-house databases will be employed for the dereplication and characterization of valuable compounds. A panel of libraries (marine organisms, extracts, pure metabolites and biocatalysts) will be constructed and exploited throughout the project. A focused panel of in-vitro, cell-based, in-ovo and in-vivo bioassays for discovering metabolites with anti-ageing and/or angiogenesis modulating activity will frame the entire work-flow and will reveal the lead compounds. In addition, the catalytic potential of mesophotic symbionts and deriving enzymes candidates will be evaluated in fine chemicals and bioremediation industries. The project activities will be constantly assessed via effective management for their societal, economical and environmental impact in order to find the best compromise between industrial development and sustainable growth.

OTTERS will aim at promoting and scaling up successful citizen science (CS) initiatives in the marine and freshwater domains via 1) accelerating the co-creation of standards in data collection, semantics, data quality, and data management making sure to abide by all ethical and legal standards; 2) promoting and scaling up successful water-related CS initiatives by clustering them under co-designed Spring-to-Sea campaigns to foster agency and increase ocean literacy; 3) connecting the citizen-generated data to other EU-funded projects and portals, including the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) and Digital Twins of the Ocean (ILIAD) to ensure the accessibility and reuse of the data and abide by all FAIR principles; 4) demonstrating the effectiveness of citizen science in participatory research, environmental monitoring and changing people’s behaviors to ensure the sustainability of water ecosystems and reach the goals of the EU Water Framework Directive and UN Decade of the Ocean.

The TRANSEATION main objective is to demonstrate the effectiveness of marine and coastal hybrid blue-grey infrastructures and validate a new level of ecosystem-based management combining nature-based solutions, social implication digitalization to the protection and restoration of marine ecosystem health and services. To ensure the success of this main objective, the TRANSEATION project counts on partners and collaborators with broad expertise in relevant areas covering four types of entities in the project (from research and technological centers to companies and offshore industrial operators) as follows: managerial (CMCC, IOW, GLP, CTN), industrial (SAITEC, ITASKORDA, GEOCORAIL, CCELL), scientifical (OE, UOH, CMCC, AZTI, GAIKER, IOW, DTU, CTN) and participatory (SO, ECOOCEAN, AZTI, CTN, CMCC). In addition, this project implements three user cases towards marine and coastal infrastructures, considering the different life cycle stages. Then, the following 5 specific objectives are identified: Specific objective 1. Apply EBM through a systema approach to integrate hybrid NbS in marine and coastal infrastructures to support the preservation and restoration of marine biodiversity and ecosystem services simultaneously with addressing multiple societal challenges (environmental, social and economic benefits). Specific objective 2. Demonstrate the effectiveness of [3] type of coastal and marine infrastructures as hybrid NbS both to preserve ecosystems and support their restoration considering its replicability and scaled-up. Specific objective 3. To identify limiting factors, gaps and current issues of existing LEED initiative regarding “blue building”, setting up links with previous projects. Specific objective 4. To analyze the benefits and potential trade-off of these hybrid solutions in short and long-term for marine biodiversity and ecosystem services protection and restoration. Specific objective 5. Digital solutions for monitoring, analysis and social involvement