SOCIB in the EuroSea Annual Meeting 2022

SOCIB has actively participated in the EuroSea Annual Meeting 2022 and the 3rd EuroSea General Assembly on 9-13 May 2022, a hybrid event hosted by the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia (ICMAN-CSIC) and co-hosted by the University of Cadiz representing and coordinating the European University of the Seas.

Over the week, the 3rd EuroSea Annual Meeting has offered a unique opportunity to share the progress in the 30 months of the project, strengthen internal project collaboration and communication, exchange ideas in various formats, advance approaches to solving different challenges, and engage in a face-to-face dialogue with external local stakeholders as well as early career scientists.

This hybrid event has included the presentations about the progress of the EuroSea Work Packages, as well as workshops on ocean integration, best practices, impact and legacy, ocean indicators, marine heat waves and UN Decade programs, among key topics. Also, an Early Career Researcher poster session has been dedicated to foster interaction and involvement of the next generation of stakeholders with the EuroSea project.

SOCIB has been actively participating throughout the week, both during the presentation of the achievements of the different Work Packages and during the workshop sessions.

On Monday 9th, a joint workshop of WP2 “Ocean Observing System Design”WP3 “Network Integration and Improvements”, and WP4 “Data Integration, Assimilation and Forecasting” was held, in which Jaime Hernández Lasheras explained the SOCIB’s experiment results on assimilating HF Radar and Gliders data into WMOP numerical model (task 4.2 and 4.3). The result of Task 2.3, in which SOCIB is involved, and whose objective is to perform different Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) in order to optimize the sampling strategy for the calibration phase of the SWOT satellite, has then been presented by Bàrbara Barceló, from the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB). At the end of the workshop, a discussion took place on the necessity for deeper collaboration between observing platforms and modelers in order to facilitate data assimilation experiments.

On Tuesday 10th, Verónica Ortiz participated in the presentation of the WP8 “Communication: Engagement, Dissemination, Exploitation, and Legacy”, and invited attendees to consider including the future EuroSea itinerant exhibition in their public engagement activities. During the presentation of WP6 “Ocean Health Demonstrator”, Diego Álvarez-Berastegui presented the advances on fisheries applications in Task 6.2 and Mélanie Juza contributed to the presentation of Task 6.1 “Extreme Marine Events Ocean Observing and Forecasting”. In particular, two web-based applications developed by SOCIB have been presented: (1) the “Mediterranean Surface Exploration Tool” for oceanographic data exploration and visualization in support to the “operational fishery oceanography”, and (2) the "Sub-regional Mediterranean Marine Heat Waves" tool to monitor and visualize timely information on marine heat waves in the Mediterranean Sea at sub-regional scale. After the WP3 presentation, Adèle Révelard presented the work on Task 3.9, concerning the elaboration of a strategic long-term vision of ocean integration. During the afternoon, a workshop entitled “Ocean integration: how to improve coordination between research activities, platforms, networks, data management, and institutions?” was led by Adèle Révelard and Joaquín Tintoré in order to collectively debate on how to further implement the strategic long-term vision presented in the plenary session. The discussion focused on the governance aspect and highlighted the strong need to develop stronger coordinated structures at the regional, national and European levels. 

On Wednesday 11th, Joaquín Tintoré presented the links between EuroSea and the Coast Predict Programme, endorsed by the UN Ocean Decade, as part of the workshop on “Interaction between EuroSea & the Ocean Decade”. In addition, Mélanie Juza co-organized the workshop on “Marine Heat Waves: a cross-cutting indicator in EuroSea”, gathering investigators from different EuroSea Work Packages and regions to discuss how to address marine heat waves: methodologies, metrics, stakeholders and observing system designs.

Finally, Joaquin Tintoré, director of SOCIB, participated in the EuroSea General Assembly and final panel discussion, which took place on Friday 13th. Moderated by Toste Tanhua, the panel discussion has been organized around three themes: Indicators, Integration and Impact, with Joaquin Tintoré, Peer Fietzek (Kongsberg Maritime), Tony Lee, (NASA), Thorsten Kiefer (JPI Oceans), Nadia Pinardi (University of Bologna) and Nico Lange (GEOMAR) as panelists. During this panel discussion, the importance of implementing a strong ocean governance structure at the regional, national and european levels was again highlighted and the needs for EOOS were similarly again emphasised. 

More information

  • EuroSea Annual Meeting 2022 Agenda (PDF)
  • SOCIB post on Twitter