ODYSSEA Project to Launch First North African Sea Observatory in Al-Hoceima

TANGIER, Morocco, Oct. 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The EU-funded ODYSSEA Project will hold its third general assembly on October 29-31, 2019 in Tangier marking the launch of North Africa's first fully operational sea observatory in Morocco's Al-Hoceima National Park.

ODYSSEA is in advanced stages of developing, operating and demonstrating an interoperable and cost-effective platform that fully integrates networks of observing and forecasting systems across the Mediterranean basin, addressing both the open sea and the coastal zone.

ODYSSEA novel instrumentation systems have been built and the first glider mission in the North Aegean trench, Greece was completed collecting environmental data from surface to 750 m depth. Another mission will be launched at its Morocco observatory at Al-Hoceima, operated by project partner Association for Integrated Resource Management (AGIR), which hosts the event.

Developed by ODYSSEA partner ALSEAMAR, the SeaExplorer underwater glider is a powerful autonomous sensing platform designed to collect water column data with wide spatio-temporal coverage.

The two gliders developed in the context of the ODYSSEA Project carry three sets of cutting-edge sensor payloads, designed to optimize the monitoring capacity of observatories' networks.

The launch of both gliders will enable ODYSSEA to provide unprecedented information from the southern Mediterranean and eventually to develop valuable services for local communities and the Blue Economy sector. 

The glider, deployed in Morocco will be used for documenting and mapping sea mammal populations, sonar ping echo, maritime traffic, health and conditions of marine habitats, human noise, and carrying out basic Environmental Protection Engineering (EPE) studies.

"We are very excited to host this meeting as the first North African observatory is becoming fully operational collecting onsite data from the ODYSSEA Platform," said Houssine Nibani, AGIR's President. "The platform will enable us to close the gap between the Northern and Southern Mediterranean shore."

"The fact that ODYSSEA choose to meet in Tangier illustrates the partnership between North and South uniting around the Mediterranean," said Professor Georgios Sylaios, who coordinates ODYSSEA.

"The event is of great importance for the project as it will enable us to integrate the various components of the project into one operational platform that will be soon offered to end users. This includes synchronizing our models, sensors, algorithms and the platform's back-end to an operative platform that will offer all marine and oceanography data."

About ODYSSEA

ODYSSEA is an EU-funded project targeting Mediterranean marine data, making it easily accessible and operational to multiple end-users.

The project, which received funding through the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, aims to develop, operate and demonstrate an interoperable and cost-effective platform which fully integrates networks of observing and forecasting systems across the Mediterranean basin.

The platform will collect data from the many databases maintained by agencies, public authorities and institutions of Mediterranean EU and non-EU countries, integrating existing earth observation facilities and networks in the Mediterranean Sea.

Contact
Menelaos Hatziapostolidis
[email protected]
+30 (6) 945154829

SOURCE ODYSSEA

Related Links

http://odysseaplatform.eu