The international marine community organised a UN Ocean Conference 2022 official side event on marine data interoperability. The event was co-organised by European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet), Fugro, IOC-UNESCO and International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) programme, Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), Intertidal Agency and Mercator Ocean International, in collaboration with the UN Ocean Decade Data Coordination Group.
On the 11th of May, the EMODnet Secretariat organised the 9th European Atlas of the Seas Steering Committee meeting, which was joined by members of different EU institutions including DG MARE, CINEA, EEA, ICES, JRC and EUROSTAT.
Following endorsement from the United Nations (UN) Ocean Decade, EMODnet co-hosted two Satellite Activities to the UN Ocean Decade Laboratory 6 ‘An Accessible Ocean’: (i) Expanding Data Interoperability between Europe and Asia; and (ii) EU Marine Data Services for the All-Atlantic and Global Ocean Data Spaces: Services and benefits offered by EU Marine Data Services COPERNICUS Marine Service and EMODnet. Both webinars took place as online events on Wednesday 11 May.
On 19-20 May 2022, EMODnet experts from across the network joined hundreds of marine and maritime stakeholders in Ravenna, Italy and online for European Maritime Day 2022 where the EC Blue Economy Report 2022 was also launched by EC services DG MARE and Joint Research Centre (JRC), featuring EMODnet and the European Atlas of the Seas.
On 19 May 2022, the first day of European Maritime Day 2022, the European Commission Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) released the fifth edition of the EU Blue Economy Report.
To assist EU Member States with reporting under MSFD, EMODnet Seabed Habitats have recently produced a summary of the extent of each MSFD Benthic Broad Habitat Type per country and sub-region. These summaries are contained within a spreadsheet and are freely available to download from the Documents and Outreach page.
An up-to-date, harmonised and validated dataset for beach litter has recently been released to the Technical Group on Marine Litter (TGML) for the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) by EMODnet Chemistry. Twenty-two Member States corrected, updated and resubmitted these data spanning from 2015 to 2020. Currently TGML has been using this dataset to define the new EU quantitative baselines for beach litter.
On 20-21 April 2022, over 70 experts from the marine, maritime, and wider domains convened in Paris for the first Digital Ocean Forum, organised by Mercator Ocean International with the support from the European Commission. Many EMODnet experts from the Secretariat, Central Portal, Data Ingestion and thematics eg. Biology, were invited to join expert Working Groups, to further define a collective community vision for a user-driven Digital Twin Ocean.
The EMOD-network has embraced the ongoing #MakeEUBlue campaign of the EU4Ocean European Ocean Literacy Coalition, with pledges from each of the seven thematics, data ingestion, the EMODnet Secretariat and European Atlas of the Seas. The full pledges are being promoted during April and May 2022 via social media, in the weeks leading up to the EU4Ocean Summit on 20 May in Ravenna, Italy, as part of European Maritime Day 2022. Read all the pledges below, and find out more in the section “…
The EMODnet partnership held its 16th EMODnet Steering Committee and 11th Technical Working Group meetings between 26-28th April 2022. The hybrid meetings brought together more than 40 experts with local participants convening in Ostend - where the EMODnet Secretariat offices are based – together with a large online participation from members across Europe.
