Scientific news

It allows to improve predictions on how marine microbes interact and could be applied to studies on climate change, bioremediation, and also to other fields such as medicine or agriculture.

More than 2,800 colonies have been returned to the sea throughout the project, and the survival rate is considerably high.

This citizen science event has also recorded observations of two species that had not been found until now in Catalonia.

According to the work, more than 12,000 species of bacteria and archaea live between the Mediterranean and the adjacent Atlantic waters.

The details of this research, led by the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) in collaboration with the Tara Oceans consortium members, are reported in an article published this week in the journal Nature Microbiology.

Until 2026, the initiative, coordinated by the ICM, will carry out a series of actions in close collaboration with the scientific community, administrations and the fishing sector.