MIO-ECSDE at the DeFishGear summer school on marine litter

The DeFishGear partner, the University of Nova Gorica, which this year celebrated its 20th anniversary, organised the International DeFishGear Summer School entitled “The growing threat of marine litter: from marine observations and knowledge to concrete actions towards solutions”. The two-week long event took place at Nova Gorica, Slovenia from 11 to 24 June 2015 and was attended by some 40 Master and PhD students from the countries of the Adriatic sea (and beyond), with research interests in the field of marine litter and other environmental pollution issues.

Participants had the opportunity to intensively interact with an international team of distinguished experts in the field of marine environmental sciences and in particular of marine litter, as well as to present and discuss their study and research interests. The summer school comprised a balanced mix of intensive lectures, moderated discussions, hands-on labs and field work. Lectures covered topics such as the amount, distribution, sources and impacts of marine litter; macro- and micro marine litter monitoring approaches and methodologies; best practices in combating marine litter, etc. MIO-ECSDE Programme Officer and DeFishGear Work Package Leader, Dr. Thomais Vlachogianni, actively participated at the summer school with two lectures focusing on ‘Monitoring macro-litter in the marine environment: overview of applied methods and data in the Adriatic Sea” and ‘Understanding the science-society nexus through the marine litter challenge: lessons learned from the MARLISCO project‘. At the coast of Debeli Rtič she demonstrated how marine litter monitoring methodologies can be applied, based on the beach monitoring protocol prepared by MIO-ECSDE in collaboration with other DeFishGear partners.