On the morning of Tuesday 23 May at the Genova Blue District, in a room of the ancient Magazzini dell’Abbondanza in the port of the Ligurian capital, the event open to the public will be held “In defense of giants of the Pelagos Sanctuary”, organized by the Fondazione CIMA – Centro Internazionale in Monitoraggio Ambientale within the framework of LIFE Conceptu Maris.

After the fine-tuning phase that took place in recent months in the Central-Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, in the coming weeks the researchers will also apply the new protocols for collecting data on the environment and animals from the ferries in the waters of the Sanctuary.

At the event, which will also be broadcast in streaming mode on the Zoom platform with access through registration and which is part of the European Maritime Day in My Country  campaign, promoted by the European Commission, all the partners who give life to LIFE Conceptu Maris will participate, the representatives of other biodiversity protection projects and also numerous institutions such as the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, ISPRA, the Municipality of Genoa, the Coast Guard, ACCOBAMS and the Permanent Secretariat of the Pelagos Agreement which, since 1999, has made it possible to protect the sea area between mainland Italy, northern Sardinia and mainland France.

In the busy program of interventions in the morning, there is also the fundamental participation of the shipping companies that have been involved in the project, transforming the line ferries into “research vessels” for biologists, from which to conduct observations. The companies have enrolled their officers in the course prepared by the CIMA Foundation (also available online) to make them aware of the behavior to adopt during navigation and the factors that increase the risk of collision with cetaceans.

During the event, which is aimed at all users of the sea (both ordinary citizens and workers in the maritime sector), the citizen science campaign will also be discussed with which citizens can volunteer on board one of the 16 routes in the Mediterranean to help researchers, and “Deep blue“, the new edition of the LIFE Conceptu Maris photographic competition, promoted by Triton Research, will be presented. As part of this initiative, which already had an excellent response from the public in the first edition, after the summer the best images of cetaceans and sea turtles, taken in our sea, will be awarded.