Marine SABRES Annual Newsletter: Issue 3
August 2025
In this, our 3rd edition, project partners from across Europe share insights into the diverse areas of Marine SABRES research and highlight the activities they've been engaged in over the past year. We hope you find the contributions both informative and inspiring!
— The Marine SABRES Consortium
Contents
Scroll to read the articles below, or navigate to each article via the link.
Note from Project Coordinator - Emma Verling, MaREI, UCC
Stakeholder Consultations: Perspectives gained from a year of engagement
- Herman Hummel and colleagues, HuFoSS
Advancing the Simple SES Approach: Progress & activities from Work Package 3
- Professor Michael Elliot and Gemma Smith, IECS
Developing Targeted Solutions: Technical update from Work Package 5
- Cassandra Tocco, University of Portsmouth
Merging Science and Storytelling: Work Package 7 outreach events in Greenland - Sandra Rybicki, HAFRO and Talea Weissang
Marine SABRES at the Scenarios Forum 2025 in Leeds - Bruno Meirelles de Oliveira, AZTI Marine Research
Engagement and Activities from the University of the Azores (UAc) - by Gustavo Oliveira de Meneses Martins, UAc
‘Marine SABRES in Fairs’ events held in Lisbon and Gran Canaria - Laura Caciagli, LifeWatch ERIC
Project activities from ECOAQUA / ULPGC - Jesús Padrón García and colleagues (ECOAQUA / ULPGC)
Marine SABRES School Competition 2025 opens for registration! - Eleonora Parisi, LifeWatch ERIC
Citizen Engagement workshops at Parque Científico Tecnológico Marino - by Inma Herrera and Candy Cecilia Ruano (ECOAQUA / ULPGC)
A year of collaboration, investigation and outreach for Marine SABRES!
“The past year has been a busy one for Marine SABRES, with considerable scientific advances, continued strong collaboration with stakeholders, and a variety of outreach activities geared towards schools and communities.
From high-level planning meetings to hands-on engagement across Europe’s coasts and islands, the project continues towards its goal of supporting ecosystem-based management (EBM) for healthy, resilient seas...”
Emma Verling (MaREI, UCC) - Marine SABRES Project Coordinator
Stakeholder Consultations: Perspectives gained from a year of engagement
Stakeholder engagement forms an integral part of the co-development of the simple SES marine and coastal management framework that lies at the heart of Marine SABRES.
The past 12 months have seen great progress on the stakeholder consultation process in our three project Demonstation Areas (DAs) - the Tuscan Archipelago, the Arctic Northeast Atlantic, and Macronesia.
As part of Work Package 2 (WP2) activities, the team at Dutch partners HuFoSS has travelled to various locations to engage a diverse group of stakeholders in gathering insights on the project’s evolving models and scenarios.
Advancing the Simple SES Approach: Progress & activities from Work Package 3
Over the past year, and in collaboration with project partners, researchers and scientists from IECS have made strong progress in refining and implementing the Simple Social-Ecological System (sSES) approach.
Developing Targeted Solutions: Technical update from Work Package 5
The goal of WP 5 is to explore how different management and policy scenarios could shape more sustainable futures for our marine envirnments, led by the project team at the University of Portsmouth.
Building on data produced from Work Package 4, which provides an understanding of how each Demonstration Area currently works, several “pathways to transformation” scenarios are being designed. These pathways are aimed at reaching biodiversity conservation and climate targets while improving resilience.
Solid progress on these goals has been made over the year. The second project deliverable (D5.3 - Societal Behavioural Changes and Incentive for Transformation) was submitted in spring, and a milestone (M5.1 - available online here) was finalised in December 2024. The third deliverable (D5.2 - Costs and Benefits, and Innovative Financial Mechanisms to reach Sustainability Targets) is scheduled for the end of this year, while the fourth and final deliverable will be completed next spring.
WP5 continues to collaborate with WP4 to conduct interviews with stakeholders from the DAs with the aim of exploring pathways for future coastal management.
The work carried out under Task 5.2 has enabled the prioritisation and specification of interventions within the DAs. The team is currently progressing with socio-economic impact assessments, in preparation for the submission of D5.2 by the end of the year.
We will also focus on refining and validating intervention simulations in collaboration with the DAs under the guidance of WP4, while also working with WP6 to identify the interventions to be integrated into the ‘Shiny’ application.
Finally, we have spent the past months developing the conceptual framework and characterising the DAs in terms of governance, which was launched in October 2024.
The coming months will be dedicated to completing data collection and assessment, validating the findings, and to revising D5.4 (Governance Arrangements for ABMTs including MPAs in ABNJ and Effective Mechanisms for the promotion of EBM).
- Cassandra Tocco, Centre for Blue Governance, University of Portsmouth
Merging Science and Storytelling: Work Package 7 outreach events in Greenland
This summer, project partners from the Arctic Northeast Atlantic DA carried out a series of outreach events in Greenland, in partnership with HAFRO and WWF Denmark. They created a workshop with the aim of bringing science to life through storytelling and creativity and to engage local communities through a range of interactive presentations.
MARINE Sabres at Scenarios Forum 2025
Our colleague Bruno Oliveira (AZTI) represented Marine SABRES at this year's Scenarios Forum 2025, held from 16 - 18 July at the University of Leeds, UK. As part of the event, Bruno co-presented a session titled "An Inclusive Approach to Enriching Global and Marine Scenarios", which highlighted how integrating diverse perspectives and knowledge systems can strengthen the development of more equitable, practical, and impactful scenarios - particularly in the marine context under the Marine SABRES project.
Engagement and Activities from the University of the Azores (UAc)
The team at UAc welcomed project partners to São Miguel and Terceira Islands in January 2025 for the second round of stakeholder consultation workshops.
Ana Costa, Andrea Botelho and Débora Gutierrez held a Macaronesian Ecological Corridor Workshop at the 36th European Cetacean Society Conference in collaboration with the BLUECONNET project on May 12. On July 7, Ana Costa presented on the topic “Stakeholder engagement in marine ecosystems’ management” at the OneOcean Workshop on the UN Ocean Decade Goals in Ponta Delgada, the Azores.
Earlier this year, the team also welcomed Simona Caruso, a PhD Student at the University of Murcia, on a research internship within the framework to establish a Macaronesian Marine Corridor.
‘Marine SABRES in Fairs' events held in Lisbon and Gran Canaria!
Project partners LifeWatch Eric were on hand to deliver two ‘Marine SABRES in Fairs’ events in the last 12 months - the first at Tropical Summit 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal from 4-8 November 2024, and most recently at FIMAR 2025 (La Feria Internacional del Mar / International Sea Fair) in Gran Canaria, Spain, in June.
This outreach series is a key opportunity to present the project’s research infrastructure to the public and to highlight and promote some of the great work being done in key areas of research within the Macronesia DA.
Project activities from ECOAQUA / ULPGC
Researchers at the ECOAQUA research institute at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) presented Marine SABRES at a range of international, climate and marine focused conferences, including the International Climate Conference in Fuerteventura in October 2024, and the 58th European Marine Biology Symposium in Bodø, Norway, in July 2025.
Marine SABRES School Competition 2025 opens for registration!
The Marine SABRES School Competition 2025 is an educational initiative for students through which they can learn about the marine environment, the link between human activities and changes in marine ecosystems, and the impact these changes have on our well-being.
The format is an online serious game which schools can sign up to play for free on Friday, 21 November - also World Fisheries Day! We are delighted to announce that registration is now open!
Citizen Engagement workshops at Parque Científico Tecnológico Marino
On 12 November 2024, the Biodiversity and Conservation Research Group (BIOCON) of the ECOAQUA Institute (ULPGC) delivered a series of workshops at the Parque Científico Tecnológico Marino. The workshop formed part of the 20th edition of ‘Science and Innovation Weeks’ organised by the Canary Islands Agency for Research, Innovation, and the Information Society (ACIISI, Regional Government of the Canary Islands). This annual event aims to bring science and researchers closer to society through dynamic, inclusive activities that inspire curiosity about sustainability, the environment, and innovation.
Inma Herrera led the workshop “Sheldon J. Plankton introduces you to the world of marine trophic chains”, while Candy Cecilia Ruano and Yaiza Fernández-Palacios ran “A puzzle on the coast: The importance of Marine Spatial Planning for the conservation of the oceans”, which included content from the Marine SABRES project among other related topics, as part of the knowledge transfer activities of the project.
During the sessions, participating secondary school students were encouraged to take part in the Serious Game School Competition, designed and organised by LifeWatch ERIC.
New Publication in Marine Management
The latest addition to the project’s list of publications is authored by Professor Michael Elliott (IECS), Roland Cormier (University of Hull), and Ángel Borja (AZTI).
The paper revisits the ‘ten-tenets’ of sustainable and successful marine management - proposed over a decade ago in a paper by Michael Elliot. In this latest work, the concepts are revisited in order to show, and advocate for, a continuum from an approach to an operationalisation of that approach, to the tools and methods for that operationalisation i.e. the Ecosystem-Based Approach (EBA) to Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) and to the new term of Ecosystem-based Technical Measures (EBTM).
Citation: Elliott, M., Cormier, R., Borja, Á., 2025. Making sense of marine management – the ten-tenets revisited. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 221: 118580; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2025.118580
Upcoming Events:
Marine SABRES at ICYMARE 2025 -
Linda Del Silvo will attend and host a session at this years’ ICYMARE conference taking place from 8-12 September in Bremerhaven, Germany. The session, entitled “Exploring Pathways to Sustainable Ocean Governance” is intended to bring together early career researchers and professionals from diverse disciplines to examine the pivotal function of sustainable ocean governance.
ICES Annual Science Conference
15-18 September, 2025 | Lithuania
