13 July 2020Among the winners of the 2020 edition of MUSE call for projects, CEE-M got funding for the project MarEEE – Crossed views on Marine urban habitats: Ecology-Evolution-Economics. MarEEE is an interdisciplinary project led by ISEM in collaboration with CEE-M, MARBEC, the University of Barcelona, CSIC, WUR, IAGE and LAB AD2M.
Project description: MarEEE aims at providing support to national and international policies and regulations targeting the protection of coastal environments (e.g., Marine Strategy Framework Directive, Ballast Water Convention). Identifying novel or expanding non indigenous species (NIS) in introduction hotspots is challenging with traditional method (morphology-based), and yet is required to comply with European and national regulations. New methodologies for monitoring NIS are needed. Such tools, based on High-Throughput Sequencing of environmental DNA, will be developed in MarEEE. In addition, knowledge about the acceptability of costs (ecological, financial, etc.) regarding port developments and according to users will be obtained. This biological and socio-economic knowledge resulting from MarEEE will help improving the design of marine environmental policies in a cost-effective, sustainable and responsible way.