Scientific news

This summer a group of researchers will turn the fibre-optic cabling installed on the seabed of the Canary Islands into a seismic network to detect earthquakes using the DAS technology, which allows converting a fibre-optic cable into a dense seismic network.

An international report out this month in which have participated ICM researchers shows that the benefits of protecting 30% of the planet’s land and ocean outweigh the costs by a ratio of at least 5-to-1.

The citizen science initiative ‘Return to the Sea’ seeks to collect the maximum number of observations of marine biodiversity on the Catalan coastline in July, August and September. 

A group of researchers from the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) of Barcelona, the Centre de Recerca Ecològica i Aplicacions Forestals (CREAF), the Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO) and the University of Queensland (Australia) has shown that the current network of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Spanish Mediterranean waters does not protect properly sharks and rays.

For a year ICM researchers will monitor the behaviour of the Norway lobster through an EMSO underwater observatory located 20 meters deep in the Irish Bay of Galway.

Researchers at ICM have described one of the larval stages of the red shrimp, which will help size the management measures of one of the most important species of commercial interest in the Mediterranean.