Following the successful launch of the HARMONY project’s underwater CCTV camera at the Malta National Aquarium last summer, within the same project, a team within the Department of Geosciences of the Faculty of Science (Prof. Alan Deidun, Dr Adam Gauci, Mr Johann Galdies) conceived the design of an animation clip on marine Invasive Alien Species (IAS) so as to better inform the general public about the hazards posed by the entry of such species.
The clip, which has been uploaded on social media, summarises in layman’s terms the salient points concerning the mechanisms which lead to the transfer of marine IAS from one geographical regional to another, to their ecological and socio-economic impacts as well as to possible management solutions.
The same research group at the University of Malta are already heavily involved in the implementation of different citizen science campaigns on a national scale, including the Spot the Alien and the Spot the Alien Fish ones and the Spot the Jellyfish campaign.
The Maltese version of the two landmark underwater documentaries on the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) of Filfla and Comino were recently launched by the Malta International Airport (MIA) Foundation and are both available for viewing on social media (Filfla; Comino). Prof. Deidun acted as executive producer on both productions, which were developed by Monolith Limited, with the English version of both documentaries being collectively viewed almost 100,000 times.
These digital ocean literacy initiatives are fully in synch with the ongoing (2021-2030) UN Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development, which is being coordinated by UNESCO, with ocean literacy being one of the pillars being promoted by the EU Commission’s Starfish Mission, of which Prof. Deidun is a member. Within the ongoing CORALLO project, funded within the ambit of the Interreg Italia-Malta 2014-2020 Funding Programme and which is coordinated by the Department of Geosciences, innovative digital tools will be availed of in order to excite visitors to Malta’s leading coastal museums about the assets to be found within our MPAs.
Prof. Deidun was recently quoted within a Euronews Living feature focusing on blue biotechnology, in which the isolation of potential cures for future pandemics as well as molecules for the treatment of tumours, inflammation and chronic pain from deep-sea species was addressed. The full feature is available online.