OCEAN NIGHT · helping society understand the importance of the marine ecosystem

Ocean Night: helping society understand the importance of the marine ecosystem

Life started in the oceans. Oceans cover the majority of Earth's surface and are the single largest ecosystem on the planet. Billions of humans live in coastal areas and depend on the functioning of this ecosystem to live. Unfortunately, human activities are seriously endangering the health of the marine ecosystem. It is therefore critical to raise awareness of the richness of this ecosystem, its importance, the challenges it faces and what we, as citizens of the world, can do to improve and preserve it through our personal choices. With the MCSA Researchers Night proposal Ocean Night we aim to contribute to this challenge by raising marine science literacy across the general population and promoting the appreciation of the importance of the marine ecosystem. Our proposal brings together five research institutes run fully or jointly by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC): IMEDEA (Esporles, Mallorca; this is the coordinating institute); CEAB (Blanes, Catalunya); ICM (Barcelona, Catalunya); ICMAN (Cadiz, Andalucía); IIM (Vigo, Galicia). These institutes represent the main research institutes in Spain focussed on marine sciences. A notable aspect of the consortium is that it covers a large and diverse portion of the Spanish coastal area, including a variety of social profiles. We believe this to be an important peculiarity of the Ocean Night project, which we are leveraging -among other things- to build a better understanding of the dependence of marine literacy on social factors.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union