The final event of the ATLANTIDA project was held at CIIMAR headquarters at the Cruise Terminal of the Port of Leixões on 12 July 2023.
The ATLANTIDA project – Platform for monitoring the North Atlantic Ocean and tools for the sustainable exploitation of marine resources, brought together more than 160 researchers from the Universities of Porto, Minho and Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UNORTE) and CIIMAR with the reference NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000040, funded by FEDER through the NORTE 2020 Programme.
The final session was attended by more than 120 researchers and was opened by the project coordinator and director of CIIMAR, Vitor Vasconcelos, the Vice-rector for Research and Innovation of the University of Porto, Pedro Rodrigues and the Pro-Rector for Infrastructures and Scientific Projects of the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Jaime Sampaio.
During the day, the main conclusions of the 5 lines of research of the project were presented. The ATLANTIDA project developed a platform for monitoring the North Atlantic Ocean and tools for the sustainable exploitation of marine resources, providing new data, information and products, such as threats to biodiversity, climate change, sustainable resource management and renewable energy. The project focussed on emerging and understudied species and ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean, as well as estimating the impacts of microplastics and other contaminants. Tools for the sustainable growth of aquaculture were created and biobanks of marine organisms were developed.
Finally, the valorisation of marine biomass was carried out, exploring it in terms of biotechnological applications, such as pharmaceutical, industrial and environmental – bioremediation.
