Yet another Interreg Italia-Malta 2014-2020 Project within which the University of Malta is a partner – SENHAR – has just folded up – with a final outreach conference being organised at the Malta National Aquarium so as to showcase the salient achievements of the project with local maritime stakeholders.
Accompanied from the other partners of the project: University of Palermo in quality of lead partner represented by Prof. Gianluca Sara’ and Dr Patricia Ventura and the Italian CNR represented by Dr Simone Mirto, the University of Malta displayed the results and the achievements of the project. SenHAR is a project which aimed to share and disseminate the knowledge of important and protected sea habitats among stakeholders and final users. In particular, these habitats were the Posidonia Oceanica seagrass meadows, Vermetid biogenic reefs and the Maerl beds. The SENHAR Consortium worked in the past two years in close contact with the interested target groups ranging from the local bathers to the divers and boat owners.
After been welcomed by Prof. Alan Deidun and Prof. Gialuca Sara’, three talks were held so to give an overview of the working phases of the project. During the first phase of the project, an ad hoc formulated questionnaire was designed in order to assess the baseline knowledge of the target groups, which provided us proof that very little is known about protected habitats, ecological roles and ecosystem services. These results were presented by Alessio Marrone from the Oceanography Malta Research Group.
Subsequently, Dr. Simone Mirto expounded how through the questionnaires, key messages for the public were formulated. The objective of this phase was indeed to produce accessible material for the target groups to promote the sustainable use of these habitats. Eco-friendly gadgets in the shape of T-shirts, recycled pencils and beach towels were produced, coupled with the design of billboards, posters and brochures distributed during the event and in the Marine Protected Areas and Natura 2000 sites included within the SenHAR.
Finally, Dr. Patricia Ventura listed all the activities carried out with the target groups in order to promote beach cleaning campaigns and TermoBLITZ gaming activity with the aim to raise the awareness toward the climate change and the event of heatwaves. Moreover, Dr. Ventura produced a number of clips for distributed within the SenHAR social media channels on the key messages produced during the project.
Several local entities working on the safeguard of our Seas were invited, such as NatureTrust Malta, Sharklab, AquaBioTech and EcoMarine Malta, which enthusiastically participated within such an event.
The SenHAR project, funded within the framework of the Interreg Italia-Malta 2014-2020 funding programme in now concluded but the relative material will be kept available within is website. The CAPSENHAR project, running till December 2023, is a follow-up, capitalisation project to SENHAR.
The Oceanography Malta Research Group (OMRG) within the Department of Geosciences represented the University of Malta within both projects, with Prof. Alan Deidun acting as the Principal Investigator (PI). Find more about this event through the Oceanography Malta Research Group YouTube page.
