Miguel Gandra, a PhD student at CCMAR, was recently awarded with a science communication grant by ART - Animal Research Tomorrow, an international NGO. 

Through his winning project "Digital multimedia content on marine biologging research for scientific and public dissemination", our PhD student aims to create appealing digital content combining underwater footages and data-driven animations based on his research about marine megafauna, such as sharks and other large-bodied species.

Due to their typically slow growth and highly migratory nature, these animals are quite vulnerable to impacts such as climate change, pollution and overexploitation, "and we need to collect more data and improve our capacity to analyse ecological processes on a large scale, translating scientific progress into appealing narratives to raise public awareness," explains the PhD student. 

"Biologging" consists of a set of techniques where wild animals are tagged with small electronic devices that measure a series of environmental and/or physiological factors (telemetry).

Miguel Gandra will work in collaboration with CCMAR Communication Department and develop a social media campaign with the underwater images and 3D animations. According to the biologist ", this campaign will contribute to increasing ocean literacy and raise awareness about marine conservation and the oceans". 

In addition, all the prepared content will be used as educational resources in the activities developed by CCMAR for the school community, from primary to secondary school.  

See the photographic work developed by Miguel HERE.