‘Best of all things is water!’ the great poet Pindar exclaimed during the very beginnings of Hellenic civilization… The seas and oceans are an immense space of 360 million square kilometres, over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface. Their 1.3 billion cubic metres of water contain infinite riches—living organisms, sources of energy, mineral deposits—whose immense potential […]
The 21st century’s ‘black gold’, rare earths are a group of 17 metals (scandium, yttrium and the 15 lanthanides) that share certain properties. Mined since the 1940s, they have become strategically important minerals vital to the manufacture of high-tech equipment (smartphones, computers, etc.) as well as to the transition towards cleaner forms of energy (wind […]
With over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching over 2,600km and a surface area of nearly 348,000km2, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef off Queensland is the largest coral reef and the largest biogenic structure (created by living organisms) in the world. Visible from space, the Great Barrier Reef of coral is made up of billions […]
BioMimetx is a Portuguese Biotech company, that is inspired by Nature to research, develop and commercialize natural and innovative compounds recovered from bacteria. After an initial seed funding for the Proof of Concept of the technology, BioMimetx raised a private investment of 1,6 M€ and received an additional 1,4 M€ through a European Commission H2020 […]
The equation simply doesn’t have a solution if we continue to do things as we do today. We won’t be able to supply a growing demand and reduce CO2 emissions to desirable levels without changing dramatically the way we eat, the way we consume and the way we produce. This is where the ocean and […]
The European Project UTOFIA (‘Underwater Time Of Flight Image Acquisition’) has enabled researchers to design a new kind of underwater camera. Unlike current technologies that lack precision and are very time-consuming, this new laser camera can record precise 3D imagery, even in turbid waters, down to a depth of 12 metres. Tested in a tuna […]
On the 26th of July 2018, Naval Énergies—a subsidiary of the French company Naval Group, Europe’s leading naval defence contractor and a major actor of renewable marine energies—announced that it would stop investing in tidal turbines and would close its (recently opened) factory in Cherbourg. This decision was made following the French government’s recent announcements […]
The share of the blue economy in the European Union (all activities linked to the oceans, seas and coastal areas) is constantly increasing according to the EU’s first annual report on the matter, published in June 2018 by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE). The Commission notes that the turnover […]
In the 1980s, the oil and mining industries coveted Antarctica’s natural resources, but international efforts led to the signature of a historic treaty in 1991 that defined the continent as ‘a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science’. A global campaign led by Greenpeace has just been launched to demand that the Southern Ocean be granted […]
A team of scientists lead by oceanographer Alan Jamieson has discovered a new ocean zone that they propose to name ‘rariphotic’. According to a March 2018 article published in Nature Scientific Reports, this new, poorly lit zone at a depth of between 130 and 300 metres is home to a multitude of living organisms. The […]
