During the week of the United Nations Oceans Conference (UNOC), the Algarve Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR-Algarve) participated in several events that highlighted the importance of preserving and conserving the oceans and marine life.

At the event that took place between 27 June and 1 July at Parque das Nações, in Lisbon, the marine protected areas (MPAs) were one of the most talked topics. Our researchers Bárbara Horta e Costa and Juliette Biquet participated in a conversation - world café - on the importance of marine protected areas, which took place on 27 June at the Ocean Base Camp, by invitation of Sciaena. The researchers also participated in the climate march, held on 29 June, with the slogan "Ocean action is climate action". As an Ambassador of the European Marine Board (EMB), Juliette also participated in the Youth Forum.

On June 30^th, Bárbara Horta e Costa presented the 'Resilience Self Assessment Tool' (R-SAT) of the European Project "Ocean Governance" in an event dedicated to MPA managers. CCMAR is a recent partner of this project that will try to implement this MPA management resilience assessment tool at a national level with our managers. 

On July 1, our researcher attended the Oceans Conference, where she delivered the Blue Park 2022 Awards to the marine protected areas distinguished for their excellent work in monitoring and managing their waters and marine biodiversity. This award "represents what was so awaited by many of us at this conference: it tries to change the existing paradigm to ensure the quality of MPAs, through standards that must be met - and not just ensure their increase in quantity, which happens through metrics with percentages of coverage."

At the side event "One sustainable Ocean" at the Pavilhão de Portugal, we promoted EMBRC.PT - a European research infrastructure that allows academic or industry researchers to access marine resources, equipment, services and scientific facilities in different EMBRC partner centres - and the associated laboratory CIMAR-LA that joins the work of two excellent marine research centres in Portugal: CCMAR and CIIMAR.

For Ana Amaral, responsible for the access to CCMAR infrastructures, "conserving and exploring oceans and marine resources for sustainable development is also about sharing scientific resources and research infrastructures, sharing marine biological samples, reducing ocean sampling effort and sharing knowledge between scientists, stakeholders and industry."

On June 27^th, the Portuguese Government announced that it was going to approve the new Marine Protected Area of Community Interest in the Algarve: the Parque Marinho do Recife do Algarve - Pedra do Valado Marine Natural Park. This proposal was delivered to the Government in 2021 by CCMAR, Universidade Do Algarve and Oceano Azul Foundation.

Our researcher Rui Santos participated in the presentation of the new pioneer project "Gulbenkian Blue Carbon" of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in collaboration with CCMAR and WWF Portugal. The researcher talked about the opportunities that exist in Portugal in terms of marine and coastal ecosystems with the potential to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Our researchers Alexandra Teodósio, Ester Serrão, Francisco Leitão, and Vânia Baptista (CCMAR and University of Algarve) organized an online conference on "Marine Africa: the role in excellence in capacity building to increase globally ocean health and quality of life", on June 30th. Several projects developed by our researchers in Africa were presented, such as LuandaWaterFront, Biofish-QoL, and LittleFish-STP, among others. The event was attended by 51 participants from eight countries and 18 institutions. The recording of this event will be available HERE.

Our researchers Jorge Gonçalves and Mafalda Rangel participated in the organization of the event ": Sistema de Alerta, Predicción y Observación (S.A.P.O) de los impactos del cambio climático sobre la pesca en el Gran Ecosistema Marino de la Corriente de Humboldt". This was an event to present the new SAPO system that is based on the use of innovative technologies to analyse the impacts of climate change on fisheries.