The Mission Restore our Oceans and Waters by 2030 provides a holistic and coherent framework for developing a systemic approach to the depollution and regeneration of the basin hydrosphere, which is a striking need in the Mediterranean Sea (MED). In the BlueMissionMed proposal, a multi-actor, trans-sectorial and multidisciplinary consortium, consisting of 6 R&I public institutions, 5 NGOs, 3 industrial associations and 2 SMEs from 5 MS and 2 AC of the MED, proposes to set up, structure and empower a MED Lighthouse supporting the development and deployment of transformative innovative technological, social, business and governance solutions for ensuring a 30-50% reduction of pollution of the basin hydrosphere by 2030. It will be an interactive multi-actors digital platform able to offer to all MED Countries/Regions and stakeholders to access the necessary knowledge and tools. It will build on, connect and structure existing initiatives and activities, including the 9 Pilot BLUEMED on plastics free healthy MED and will exploit the R&I and policy knowledge generated by the funded projects/initiatives on the MED decontamination and restoration, ultimately promoting basin-wide cooperation, commitment and deployment of solutions addressing the Mission objectives. The Lighthouse will also ensure i) coherence, alignment and monitoring of EU, national and local policies, initiatives and actions ongoing the MED basin; ii) an effective provision of technical services, governance and business models to support and guarantee a sustainable socio-economic development of the basin; iii) a well-functioning basin scale innovation ecosystem attractive towards investors and businesses, iv) the required engagement of the society at large, thanks to a robust awareness raising and citizen science approach in its implementation in the sea basin and beyond, and, thus, v) the effective deployment of Mission Implementation Charter and piloting of the Mission objectives for the MED by 2025.

In ANERIS, we propose to develop the next generation of scientific instrumentation tools and methods for sensing marine-life. The design of the new instruments and methods will integrate different types of marine life-sensing technologies: genomics, imaging-biooptics and participatory sciences. The technologies will be implemented in a co-design framework, involving all the interested stakeholders: academia, industry, civil society and government. The project proposes the concept of Operational Marine Biology (OMB), understood as a biodiversity information system for systematic and long-term routine measurements of the ocean and coastal life, and their rapid interpretation and dissemination. The production of FAIR Operational Marine Biology data will be carried out in a distributed IT infrastructure built from edge and cloud compute nodes, to be connected with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The technologies will be tested and validated in different case studies, involving the ANERIS innovations, commercial instruments to be improved and different world-class research infrastructures (RI). The project will develop a training program for the operation and use of these new solutions for all the involved stakeholders and particularly the research infrastructures staff. Overall, the project proposes to benefit all the actors involved in the quintuple helix framework of innovation, promoting innovation and knowledge sharing among them: (1) the academy with new life-sensing technologies to use in research; (2) the industry with new technologies and methods to exploit; (3) the governments, with improved observational systems and data products to be used in environmental management directives; (4) the civil society, empowered through the proposed participative technologies and large collaborative networks and (5) the Research Infrastructures, integrating new generation of sensing instruments and methods, and their staff being trained on those new technologies.